Arm Holdings vs Unilever: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: Arm Holdings and Unilever side by side

1. 1884Unilever

   Lever soap factory opens

   William Hesketh Lever built the Port Sunlight soap business that became a key Unilever predecessor.

2. 1929Unilever

   Unilever created

   Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie merged to form Unilever.

3. 1929Unilever

   Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie Merge

   Lever Brothers and the Dutch Margarine Unie merged in 1929 to form Unilever.

4. 1984Unilever

   Acquired Brooke Bond

   Unilever acquired Brooke Bond in 1984 for ~$515 million (£390 million).

5. 1985Arm Holdings

   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.

6. 1989Unilever

   Acquired Calvin Klein Cosmetics

   Unilever acquired Calvin Klein Cosmetics in 1989.

7. 1990Arm Holdings

   Arm 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.

8. 1993Arm Holdings

   Apple 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.

9. 1993Unilever

   Acquired Breyers

   Unilever acquired Breyers in 1993.

10. 1998Arm Holdings

    Dual 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.

11. 2000Unilever

    Acquired Maille

    Unilever acquired Maille. Unilever acquired Maille in 2000.

12. 2001Arm Holdings

    Warren 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.

13. 2004Arm Holdings

    Artisan 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.

14. 2007Arm Holdings

    iPhone Launch Accelerates Smartphone Royalty Growth

    Apple launched the original iPhone with a Samsung-manufactured application processor built on an ARM11 core.

15. 2013Arm Holdings

    Simon 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.

16. 2016Arm Holdings

    SoftBank 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.

17. 2019Unilever

    Alan Jope becomes CEO

    Alan Jope became CEO of Unilever in 2019. Jope simplified Unilever's legal structure and organisation, which made later portfolio separations easier.

18. 2020Arm Holdings

    Nvidia Agrees to Buy Arm for $40 Billion

    Nvidia announced an agreement to acquire Arm from SoftBank for about $40 billion in cash and stock.

19. 2020Unilever

    Legal structure unified

    Unilever moved to a single parent company structure after decades with British and Dutch holding companies.

20. 2020Unilever

    Single Parent Company

    Unilever unified its dual structure into a single parent company, Unilever PLC, in November 2020.

21. 2022Arm Holdings

    Nvidia 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.

22. 2023Arm Holdings

    Nasdaq 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.

23. 2024Arm Holdings

    Fiscal 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.

24. 2025Arm Holdings

    Artisan 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 ag…

25. 2025Arm Holdings

    Lumex 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.

26. 2025Arm Holdings

    Fiscal 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.

27. 2025Unilever

    Fernando Fernandez becomes CEO

    Fernando Fernandez was appointed CEO effective March 2025.

28. 2025Unilever

    Ice Cream demerger reflected

    Unilever reported 2025 results on a continuing-operations basis after the Ice Cream business demerger.

29. 2026Arm Holdings

    Arm 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.

30. 2026Arm Holdings

    Fiscal 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.

Acquisitions

Questions about Arm Holdings vs Unilever