Arm Holdings plc

ARM — Advanced RISC Machines — was founded in November 1990 as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple, and VLSI Technology in a barn in Cambridge, England. The partnership was born of necessity: Apple needed an energy-efficient processor for its Newton personal digital assistant, Acorn had developed the ARM processor architecture but lacked resources to commercialise it alone, and VLSI provided manufacturing expertise. The company began with 12 employees, no revenue, and an architecture that would eventually run inside more devices than any other processor design in history.

ARM adopted a business model that was unusual in the semiconductor industry: rather than manufacturing chips, ARM licensed its processor architecture to other companies who incorporated it into their own chip designs. The model required less capital than manufacturing and created a growing ecosystem of ARM-compatible chips. ARM earned royalties on every chip sold using its architecture. As the mobile phone market grew from millions to billions of devices, the royalty stream became extraordinary. ARM's design appeared in Nokia phones, Apple iPhones, Samsung Galaxys, and virtually every other smartphone.

ARM went public in April 1998 simultaneously on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ — a dual listing that reflected both its British origins and its ambition to compete for American technology investment. The IPO raised £170 million. ARM's stock subsequently rose over 1,000% during the dot-com boom as investors recognised that every mobile device would need an energy-efficient processor — and ARM's architecture was uniquely positioned to provide it. The company had bet on mobile computing before most investors understood what mobile computing would become.

Masayoshi Son's SoftBank acquired ARM in July 2016 for £24.3 billion — at the time the largest ever acquisition of a European technology company. Son described ARM as the "brain" of the internet of things — the billions of connected devices that he believed would transform every industry. The acquisition was controversial: British politicians worried about a national technology champion passing into foreign ownership. Son promised to double ARM's UK workforce. ARM continued to operate with significant autonomy under SoftBank ownership.

Nvidia attempted to acquire ARM from SoftBank for $40 billion in 2020 — a deal that would have created the most powerful semiconductor company in the world. Regulators in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and China all raised concerns. The deal collapsed in February 2022. ARM went public on NASDAQ in September 2023 in the largest technology IPO of the year, valuing the company at approximately $55 billion. The barn in Cambridge had become one of the most valuable technology companies in the world — despite never manufacturing a single chip.