Arm Is Now Making Its Own Chips | WIREDSkip to main contentMenuSECURITYPOLITICSTHE BIG STORYBUSINESSSCIENCECULTUREREVIEWSMenuAccountAccountNewslettersSecurityPoliticsThe Big StoryBusinessScienceCultureReviewsChevronMoreExpandThe Big InterviewMagazineEventsWIRED InsiderWIRED ConsultingNewslettersPodcastsVideoLivestreamsMerchSearchSearchLauren GoodeBusinessMar 24, 2026 1:00 PMArm Is Now Making Its Own ChipsThe chip design firm says Meta, OpenAI, Cerebras, and Cloudflare are among the first customers of its new artificial intelligence hardware.Arm CEO Rene HaasPhotograph: Kimberly White/Getty ImagesCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyArm, one of the world’s leading chip design firms, announced Tuesday that it is producing its own semiconductors. The move is a departure from its long-standing model of licensing intellectual property to companies that manufacture and sell chips themselves. Speaking to a live audience in San Francisco, Arm CEO Rene Haas made his pitch for how the new Arm CPU could benefit the tech industry and why this is the right time for the company to step outside of its lane and go head-to-head with other chipmakers.“Let me be clear: We are now in a new business for ARM, and we are supplying CPUs,” Haas said, holding up one of the company's new chips. Arm’s primary reason for moving in this direction, Haas said, is demand from customers.. But as artificial intelligence proliferates throughout the economy and demand for computing resources skyrockets, Arm is also trying to capture a sliver of the growing AI CPU market.Arm’s in-house chip efforts had long been rumored, but now the company is finally offering a clearer picture of what it’s doing. The new chip is called the Arm AGI CPU, a nod to artificial general intelligence, an often-invoked but still hypothetical form of AI that could match human performance across domains. It’s designed to be coupled with other chips in high-performance servers inside data centers and to handle agentic AI tasks. The chip is being fabricated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, the world’s leading semiconductor foundry, and is being built using TSMC’s 3nm process.At the chip reveal event, Arm executives emphasized the company’s history of designing energy-efficient chips and claimed that its new AGI CPU will be the world’s “most efficient agentic CPU on the market.” Compared to competitors like the latest x86 chips made by Intel and AMD, Arm says this chip will deliver better performance per watt, or the amount of energy a computer uses to operate, and could save customers billions of dollars in electricity spending.The first major customer of Arm’s new chip is Meta, which the company says has received samples of the CPU. OpenAI, SAP, Cerebras, and Cloudflare, as well as the Korean tech firms SK Telecom and Rebellions, have also agreed to buy the chip. Arm projects its AGI CPU will reach “full production availability” in the second half of this year.Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of infrastructure, appeared on stage and said he thought the Arm chip was going to “expand the [chip] industry on multiple axes.” As Meta pushes toward “personal superintelligence"—AI that will make its apps deeply personalized—Janardhan said the company needs more silicon, and is especially interested in power efficiency.OpenAI’s vice president of science and former chief product officer, Kevin Weil, also showed up on stage alongside Haas. “One of the most common things I hear inside of OpenAI: ‘I need more compute,’” Weil said. “It’s kind of the coin of the realm.”Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Amazon senior vice president and distinguished engineer James Hamilton, and Google AI infrastructure chief Amin Vahdat appeared in pretaped video testimonials praising Arm’s new hardware. None committed to buying it, but all three tech giants already use Arm’s designs in their own processors.Arm’s history traces back to the late 1970s, when it was known as Acorn and produced microprocessors. In the 1990s the entity changed its name to ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) and its then-CEO began licensing the firm’s chip designs to other companies. Arm, which has since dropped the all-caps “ARM” branding, saw its business boom during the mobile revolution. By the 2010s many of the world’s largest tech companies, including Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung, and Tesla, were all relying on its technology.Arm appeared eager at the press event to demonstrate it has support from bold-faced names in the tech industry. While the company is mostly taking aim at chipmakers like AMD and Intel, which build CPUs based on a different architecture, it risks potentially alienating some of its longtime partners by releasing its own chip. Nvidia, which primarily makes GPUs, also bundles Arm-based CPUs into its rack systems. Earlier this year, Nvidia said it would sell stand-alone CPUs for the first time. Meta was one of its first buyers.Ben Bajarin, CEO and principal analyst at the research firm Creative Strategies, says that Arm could be perceived more as a competitor than partner as its strategy evolves. Right now, Arm is launching a streamlined CPU with a relatively small number of cores—the chip’s built-in processing units—designed specifically for running AI agents, Bajarin points out. Over time, Arm may expand into more general-purpose CPUs, while AMD and Intel develop chips tailored for agentic AI. That would put the companies in more direct competition with one another.But at the moment, Bajarin says, Arm is simply trying to get in on the fast-growing market for data center CPUs. Creative Strategies forecasts that demand for such chips will grow from $25 billion this year to $60 billion globally by 2030. That figure represents only CPUs for traditional cloud computing data centers. When CPUs for agentic AI are factored in, Bajarin’s demand estimate jumps closer to $100 billion by 2030. Even if Arm captures only a sliver of that, it could be a significant source of revenue for the company.CommentsBack to topTriangleYou Might Also LikeIn your inbox: Will Knight's AI Lab explores advances in AI‘Flying cars’ will take off this summerBig Story: Inside OpenAI’s race to catch up to Claude CodeHow ‘Handala’ became the face of Iran’s hacker counterattacksListen: Nvidia’s ‘Super Bowl of AI,’ and Tesla disappointsLauren Goode is a senior correspondent at WIRED covering all things Silicon Valley, including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, venture capital, startups, workplace culture, and tech's most interesting people and trends. Previously she worked at The Verge, Recode, and The Wall Street Journal. Please send story tips (no PR pitches) to ChaoticGoode.12 ... 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Arm, one of the world’s leading chip design firms, has announced a significant shift in its business model: it is now producing its own semiconductors. This departure from its traditional practice of licensing intellectual property for chip manufacturing represents a strategic move driven primarily by escalating demand, particularly within the burgeoning artificial intelligence (AI) sector. According to Arm CEO Rene Haas, this decision is largely fueled by customer requests, recognizing the exponential growth in computing resources needed to support AI proliferation across diverse industries. Arm is actively positioning itself to capture a portion of the rapidly expanding AI CPU market.

The newly developed chip, dubbed the Arm AGI CPU, is designed to augment high-performance servers within data centers and to facilitate agentic AI tasks—a concept referring to AI systems capable of autonomous decision-making and operation. The AGI CPU is being manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), utilizing TSMC’s advanced 3nm process technology. A key selling point highlighted by Arm executives is the chip’s energy efficiency, boasting claims that it will be the “world’s most efficient agentic CPU.” This emphasis on performance per watt is intended to translate into substantial cost savings for customers, particularly in energy expenditure, as compared to competing x86 chips from Intel and AMD.

Initial customer validation for the Arm AGI CPU includes Meta, which has received sample units, alongside other prominent tech companies such as OpenAI, SAP, Cerebras, Cloudflare, the Korean tech firms SK Telecom and Rebellion Technologies. Arm projects full production availability for the AGI CPU in the second half of 2026. Meta’s infrastructure head, Santosh Janardhan, expressed his belief that Arm’s new chip will “expand the [chip] industry on multiple axes,” particularly in support of Meta’s ambition to develop “personal superintelligence.” Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s vice president of science, echoed this sentiment, citing the widespread demand for increased computing power within the organization. Technical testimonials from Jensen Huang (Nvidia), James Hamilton (Amazon), and Amin Vahdat (Google AI infrastructure) further validated Arm’s capabilities, though none committed to immediate purchase.

Arm’s history is deeply rooted in the evolution of the semiconductor industry, originating in the late 1970s as Acorn and progressing to ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) in the 1990s. The company’s success was intrinsically linked to the mobile revolution, as it licensed its chip designs to numerous global tech giants including Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Samsung, and Tesla. This established ecosystem solidified Arm’s position as a dominant force. The company's rebranding to simply “Arm” reflected a shift in strategy, and it now directly confronts established chipmakers like AMD and Intel, which predominantly utilize x86 architecture. Ben Bajarin, CEO and principal analyst at Creative Strategies, suggests that Arm may be perceived as a competitive rather than a collaborative partner as its strategy evolves. He notes the AGI CPU’s focus on agentic AI applications and anticipates potential long-term competition between Arm and companies like AMD and Intel that are also tailoring chips for this sector.

Market forecasts, as outlined by Creative Strategies, project explosive growth for data center CPUs, anticipating a rise from $25 billion in 2026 to $60 billion globally by 2030. This figure considers only CPUs designed for traditional cloud computing deployments. When incorporating CPUs intended for agentic AI workloads, the total market projection swells to approximately $100 billion by 2030. This suggests an immense opportunity for Arm, even if it only captures a fraction of this market.