Arm doesn’t make chips. Instead, it designs processor architectures and licenses them to other companies — and this model has made it arguably the most influential chip company you’ve never directly bought from.
Over 99% of smartphones use Arm-based processors. Apple’s A-series and M-series chips, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, Samsung’s Exynos, and MediaTek’s Dimensity all build on Arm’s instruction set architecture. That’s more than 250 billion Arm-based chips shipped to date.
Arm’s architecture succeeds because it prioritizes power efficiency. Mobile devices need processors that deliver solid performance without draining the battery in hours, and Arm’s RISC-based designs excel at this tradeoff. This same advantage is now driving Arm into data centers — Amazon’s Graviton processors and Ampere’s cloud-native chips both use Arm architecture, offering better performance per watt than traditional x86 servers.
Apple’s transition from Intel to its own Arm-based M-series chips in Macs proved that Arm can match or beat x86 performance in laptops and desktops. This move sent shockwaves through the industry and accelerated Arm’s push beyond mobile.
The company went public in September 2023 after being owned by SoftBank since 2016. Its IPO was one of the largest tech offerings that year. Arm’s business model is unique — it earns royalties on every chip sold using its designs, plus upfront licensing fees. This means Arm profits from the entire semiconductor industry’s growth without manufacturing a single chip. As computing spreads into cars, IoT devices, and edge computing, Arm’s reach keeps expanding.
