Arm Holdings
Company History
Arm Holdings History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 1990 in Cambridge, United Kingdom
When was Arm Holdings founded?
Arm Holdings was founded in 1990 in Cambridge, United Kingdom by Robin Saxby, Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber, making it 36 years old.
- Founded
- 1990
- Founding place
- Cambridge, United Kingdom
- Founders
- Robin Saxby, Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber
- Headquarters today
- Cambridge, United Kingdom
- Milestones documented
- 18 (1985–2026)
- Current CEO
- Rene Haas
- Acquisitions
- 4
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1985 | ARM1 Processor First Silicon |
| 1990 | Arm Founded as an Acorn, Apple and VLSI Joint Venture |
| 1993 | Apple Newton Ships with ARM610 and Arm Turns Profitable |
| 1998 | Dual Listing on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq |
| 2001 | Warren East Becomes Chief Executive |
| 2004 | Artisan Components Acquired for $913 Million |
| 2007 | iPhone Launch Accelerates Smartphone Royalty Growth |
| 2013 | Simon Segars Succeeds Warren East as CEO |
| 2016 | SoftBank Acquires Arm for ~$32.1 billion (24.3 Billion Pounds) |
| 2020 | Nvidia Agrees to Buy Arm for $40 Billion |
| 2022 | Nvidia Deal Collapses and Rene Haas Becomes CEO |
| 2023 | Nasdaq IPO Prices at $51 and Raises $4.87 Billion |
| 2024 | Fiscal 2024 Revenue Reaches $3.23 Billion |
| 2025 | Artisan Foundation IP Business Sold to Cadence |
| 2025 | Lumex Client Platform Launched for On-Device AI |
| 2025 | Fiscal 2025 Revenue Passes $4 Billion |
| 2026 | Arm Launches the AGI CPU, Its First Production Silicon |
| 2026 | Fiscal 2026 Revenue Reaches $4.92 Billion |
- Where was Arm Holdings founded?
- Arm Holdings was founded in Cambridge, United Kingdom in 1990. wikidata.org
- Who founded Arm Holdings?
- Arm Holdings was founded by Robin Saxby, Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber.
- When did Arm Holdings start?
- Arm Holdings was founded in 1990.
- How old is Arm Holdings?
- Arm Holdings is 36 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
In 1990, Apple was desperately trying to build the 'Newton', a handheld personal assistant. The problem was that existing processors required too much power and would instantly drain the AA batteries. Apple discovered a small British company called Acorn Computers that had designed a bizarrely simple, low-power chip for educational desktops. Apple executives flew to Cambridge, gave Acorn $3 million, and created a joint venture named Advanced RISC Machines (Arm) specifically to design the Newton's chip. The Newton was a commercial disaster, but the low-power chip architecture it funded went on to conquer the globe.
Founders
Robin Saxby
The founding of Arm (Advanced RISC Machines) is a quintessentially British technology story, born out of a desperate need to build a more efficient computer processor. The company's roots lie in Acorn Computers, a pioneering British tech company often referred to as the 'British Apple,' founded in 1978 in Cambridge by Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry. In the early 1980s, Acorn achieved success with the BBC Micro, an educational computer used in schools across the UK. However, as Acorn sought to build a more powerful successor to the BBC Micro, they ran into a critical bottleneck. The existing microprocessors on the market, like the Motorola 68000, were powerful but consumed too much energy and were ill-suited for the elegant, responsive operating system Acorn was designing. Frustrated by the available options, a small, effective team of Acorn engineers, led by Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber, decided to design their own processor from scratch. Wilson designed the instruction set (the basic language the processor understands), and Furber designed the microarchitecture. Their defining innovation was embracing the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) philosophy, which prioritized simplicity and efficiency over complex, power-hungry instructions. The resulting Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processor was a marvel of engineering, running significantly faster than rival chips while consuming a fraction of the electricity. This extreme power efficiency caught the attention of Apple who was desperately searching for a low-power processor for their new, influential handheld device, the Apple Newton. In 1990, Apple, Acorn, and VLSI Technology formed a new, independent joint venture named Advanced RISC Machines (later simply Arm). While the Apple Newton was a commercial failure, the foundational IP established by Wilson, Furber, and the founding engineers at Arm laid the architectural groundwork for the entire global mobile computing revolution, ensuring that decades later, almost every smartphone on Earth would run on their foundational designs. Robin Saxby was born in 1947 in Chesterfield. Education: University of Liverpool; Brookfield Community School.
Sophie Wilson
Sophie Wilson, along with Steve Furber, designed the original ARM processor at Acorn Computers in 1983 to 1985. Wilson was responsible for the ARM instruction set architecture, a contribution that makes her one of the most consequentially influential chip architects in computing history, even as her role is less widely known outside technical communities than the commercial story of the companies that commercialized her design. Wilson became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, both among the United Kingdom's highest scientific honors. After the formation of Arm Ltd., Wilson did not join the new company directly, instead remaining at Acorn before the company's eventual dissolution. She joined Broadcom's Cambridge design center, where she has continued to work on processor and network chip design. Wilson was awarded a CBE in 2019 for services to the technology industry. Sophie Wilson was born in 1957 in Leeds. Education: Selwyn College.
Steve Furber
Steve Furber served as the ARM processor's lead hardware designer at Acorn before the formation of Arm Ltd., but like Sophie Wilson did not join the new company directly. Instead, Furber pursued an academic career, joining the University of Manchester as the ICL Professor of Computer Engineering. At Manchester, he led the development of the SpiNNaker (Spiking Neural Network Architecture) project, a parallel computing system designed to simulate the brain's neural architecture, which became one of the most ambitious neuromorphic computing research programs in the world. Furber was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and was awarded a CBE in 2013 for services to computer science. He has remained an influential commentator on the semiconductor industry and on computing education in the United Kingdom, and his original ARM hardware design work is recognized as foundational to the mobile computing revolution. Steve Furber was born in 1953. Education: Emmanuel College; St John's College.
Key Milestones
ARM1 Processor First Silicon
The first ARM processor, ARM1, reached silicon at Acorn Computers, designed by Sophie Wilson, who wrote the instruction set, and Steve Furber, who led the hardware. The name then stood for Acorn RISC Machine, and the design demonstrated the power efficiency that would define the family.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgArm Founded as an Acorn, Apple and VLSI Joint Venture
The company was incorporated in November 1990 as Widelogic Limited and renamed Advanced RISC Machines Limited on December 3, 1990, structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer and VLSI Technology. Acorn contributed 12 engineers and the ARM design, Apple invested $3 million, and VLSI supplied design tools. Robin Saxby was recruited as the first chief executive and took the role in 1991.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgApple Newton Ships with ARM610 and Arm Turns Profitable
Apple launched the Newton MessagePad, powered by an ARM610 processor, the first significant consumer product built on an ARM-based chip. Newton sold poorly, but 1993 was Arm's first profitable year and the design proved the architecture in a battery-powered device. Arm opened its Silicon Valley and Tokyo offices the following year.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDual Listing on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq
Arm floated on April 17, 1998, trading in London and New York on the same day after being priced at 575p a share by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Cazenove. The company was renamed ARM Holdings at the listing and joined the FTSE 100.
Source: thetimes.comWarren East Becomes Chief Executive
Warren East was appointed chief executive in October 2001, succeeding Robin Saxby. Over the following twelve years Arm established the Cortex CPU and Mali GPU families and became the standard architecture for smartphones.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgArtisan Components Acquired for $913 Million
Arm bought Artisan Components, a designer of physical IP such as standard cell libraries, memory compilers and input and output cells, extending Arm from processor designs into the foundry-specific building blocks needed to fabricate a chip. Arm also acquired Axys Design Automation the same year.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgiPhone Launch Accelerates Smartphone Royalty Growth
Apple launched the original iPhone with a Samsung-manufactured application processor built on an ARM11 core. The smartphone market it opened, together with Android, turned Arm royalties from a modest stream into the core of the business as partners shipped hundreds of millions of Arm-based chips a year.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSimon Segars Succeeds Warren East as CEO
Arm announced in March 2013 that Warren East would retire and that president Simon Segars, who joined Arm in 1991 as one of its early engineers, would become chief executive from July 1, 2013.
Source: businesswire.comSoftBank Acquires Arm for ~$32.1 billion (24.3 Billion Pounds)
SoftBank Group agreed on July 18, 2016 to acquire Arm Holdings for 24.3 billion pounds, about $31.4 billion in cash, and completed the deal on September 5, 2016. Arm was delisted from the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, and SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son framed the purchase around a future of a trillion connected devices.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgNvidia Agrees to Buy Arm for $40 Billion
Nvidia announced an agreement to acquire Arm from SoftBank for about $40 billion in cash and stock. The proposal drew scrutiny from competition authorities in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and China, which questioned whether one chip company should control an architecture the whole industry licenses.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgNvidia Deal Collapses and Rene Haas Becomes CEO
Nvidia and SoftBank terminated the acquisition in February 2022 after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued to block it, the UK Competition and Markets Authority recommended against it and EU regulators opened a Phase II review. Rene Haas, who had run Arm's IP products group, became chief executive in February 2022 and SoftBank turned to an initial public offering instead.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgNasdaq IPO Prices at $51 and Raises $4.87 Billion
Arm listed on Nasdaq on September 14, 2023 under the ticker ARM, pricing American depositary shares at $51 and raising about $4.87 billion at a valuation of roughly $54.5 billion. It was the largest U.S. listing since 2021, and SoftBank retained the great majority of the shares.
Source: theguardian.comFiscal 2024 Revenue Reaches $3.23 Billion
Arm reported fiscal 2024 revenue of $3,233 million, up 21%, made up of $1,802 million of royalty revenue and $1,431 million of license and other revenue, with net income of $306 million. Hyperscaler adoption of Neoverse designs by Amazon, Google and Microsoft was the fastest-growing part of the mix.
Source: sec.govArtisan Foundation IP Business Sold to Cadence
Arm completed the sale of its Artisan foundation IP business, the standard cell libraries, memory compilers and general-purpose input and output blocks it had built up since the 2004 Artisan acquisition, to Cadence Design Systems on August 26, 2025 under an agreement signed in April 2025. Arm received $127 million of proceeds and recorded a pre-tax gain of $131 million in fiscal 2026.
Source: sec.govLumex Client Platform Launched for On-Device AI
In September 2025 Arm launched Lumex, its compute subsystem platform for flagship smartphones and next-generation PCs, pairing C1 CPUs and G1 GPUs with Scalable Matrix Extension version 2 for on-device AI. Lumex was the first product line to use the platform naming Arm introduced in May 2025, alongside Neoverse for infrastructure, Niva for PCs, Zena for automotive and Orbis for IoT.
Source: newsroom.arm.comFiscal 2025 Revenue Passes $4 Billion
Arm reported fiscal 2025 revenue of $4,007 million, up 24%, with royalty revenue of $2,168 million and license and other revenue of $1,839 million, and net income of $792 million. Research and development spending rose to $2,071 million as Arm invested in data center designs.
Source: sec.govArm Launches the AGI CPU, Its First Production Silicon
At the Arm Everywhere event in San Francisco on March 24, 2026, Arm introduced the Arm AGI CPU, the first chip it designed and sells as finished silicon rather than licensable IP. Built on up to 136 Neoverse V3 cores with 12 DDR5 memory channels and PCIe Gen6 in a 300W envelope, it targets agentic AI data centers, with Meta as lead partner and co-developer and systems available from ASRock, Lenovo, Quanta and Supermicro.
Source: newsroom.arm.comFiscal 2026 Revenue Reaches $4.92 Billion
Arm reported fiscal 2026 revenue of $4,920 million, up 23% and a third consecutive year of growth above 20% since the IPO, with royalty revenue of $2,613 million, license and other revenue of $2,307 million and net income of $904 million. Headcount reached 9,584 and cumulative shipments of Arm-based chips passed 350 billion.
Source: newsroom.arm.comMajor Acquisitions
Artisan Components
2004Arm acquired Artisan Components, a designer of physical IP, for about $913 million in stock and cash. Physical IP covers the foundry-specific standard cell libraries, memory compilers and input and output cells a designer needs to turn a processor design into silicon on a particular manufacturing process, so the deal extended Arm from processor architecture into design enablement.
Apical
2016Arm bought Apical, a Loughborough-based imaging and embedded computer vision company, for $350 million in cash in May 2016. Apical's image signal processing and display technology had already shipped in more than 1.5 billion smartphones, and Arm wanted it for vehicles, security systems, robotics and other devices that need to interpret what a camera sees.
Treasure Data
2018Under SoftBank ownership Arm acquired Treasure Data, a cloud-based enterprise customer data platform, in a deal Bloomberg reported at about $600 million. The rationale was SoftBank's view of Arm as an end-to-end IoT company: Arm processors at the edge, Treasure Data collecting and analysing the resulting data in the cloud.
Stream Technologies
2018Arm acquired Stream Technologies, a Glasgow company specialising in cellular IoT connectivity management, for an undisclosed sum in 2018 and combined it with its Pelion device management platform. The aim was to sell connectivity, device management and data services to IoT deployments rather than only the processor designs inside the devices.
Keep researching Arm Holdings
Arm Holdings Company History FAQ
What were the key eras in Arm's evolution from 1990 to the 2007 smartphone revolution?
Founded in 1990 in a Cambridge barn, Arm created the IP licensing model, became the global digital mobile phone standard with Nokia in 1993, went public in 1998, and was selected by Steve Jobs in 2007 to power the original Apple iPhone.
How did the 2007 launch of the Apple iPhone cement Arm's mobile dominance?
The original 2007 iPhone was powered by a Samsung-manufactured 412 MHz Arm11 processor; every subsequent iPhone and Android smartphone has utilized Arm architecture, transforming Arm into the mobile computing standard.
When did Arm introduce the 64-bit Armv8-A architecture?
Arm announced the major 64-bit Armv8-A architecture in October 2011; Apple surprised the tech world by launching the first commercial 64-bit mobile chip (the A7 in the iPhone 5S) in September 2013, forcing the entire industry to accelerate to 64-bit Arm.
What occurred during SoftBank's $32 billion acquisition of Arm in 2016?
SoftBank Group agreed on July 18, 2016 to buy Arm for 24.3 billion pounds, about $31.4 billion in cash, and completed the deal on September 5, 2016. It was the largest foreign takeover of a British technology company at the time and took Arm off the London and Nasdaq markets.
What occurred during the abandoned $40 billion NVIDIA-Arm merger (2020 to 2022)?
NVIDIA agreed to buy Arm in September 2020 for $40 billion, but abandoned the deal in February 2022 due to fierce regulatory opposition from the FTC, UK CMA, and EU, leading SoftBank to prepare Arm for a public listing.
When did Arm launch the Neoverse data center processor platform?
Arm launched the dedicated Neoverse brand in October 2018, developing custom infrastructure-grade server cores that enabled AWS Graviton, Microsoft Azure Cobalt, Google Cloud Axion, and NVIDIA Grace to capture market share from x86.
What were the major milestones in Arm's landmark September 2023 NASDAQ IPO?
Arm listed on Nasdaq on September 14, 2023 under the ticker ARM, pricing American depositary shares at $51 to raise about $4.87 billion at a valuation of roughly $54.5 billion, the largest U.S. listing since 2021. By September 30, 2026 its market capitalisation had reached about $309 billion.
What is Arm's strategic vision for computing in the artificial intelligence era?
Arm's vision centers on ubiquitous energy-efficient AI, delivering on-device AI inference across billions of smartphones and edge devices via Armv9, while powering high-throughput hyperscale AI data centers with Neoverse Compute Subsystems.
When was Arm founded?
Arm was founded in 1990 in Cambridge, UK as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple, and VLSI Technology.
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