Nasdaq Welcomes Arm, the Company at the Heart of the Semiconductor Revolution

Today, Nasdaq proudly welcomes British semiconductor design company, Arm (ARM), as a listed company on the exchange. Arm went public through an initial public offering (IPO) with $4.87 billion in proceeds raised, becoming the largest IPO of 2023 to date. 

This is Arm’s second IPO on Nasdaq. Before being acquired in 2016, the company had been listed on the exchange since 1998. Now, with a market cap of $54 billion, Arm rejoins a growing, distinguished roster of listed semiconductor companies. “Nasdaq is the home of the semiconductor industry. Nearly all of our semiconductor peers are listed here,” said Ian Thornton, Arm’s VP of Investor Relations.

“We are elated to welcome Arm back on Nasdaq,” said Karen Snow, Nasdaq’s Global Head of Listings. “As a company that is constantly questioning how to forge a better tomorrow, Arm aligns perfectly with our mission, and we could not be more excited to see what Arm has on the horizon.”

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A Global Leader in Semiconductor Technology

Arm licenses high-performance and energy-efficient CPU products and related technologies that the world’s leading semiconductor companies and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) rely on to develop their products. Its designs are the building blocks that power a host of devices, applications and services across global markets. Today, Arm-based products run the majority of the world’s software, including the operating systems and applications for smartphones, tablets, personal computers, vehicles, data centers and networking equipment.

“Our business model is unique in that we don't design or manufacture computer chips. Instead, we design one of the very important components that go into the computer chip, the processor, the brain of the chip,” said Thornton. “Think of what we provide as a blueprint. We license those processor designs to the companies who design or manufacture computer chips. They pay us an initial license fee, and then a royalty fee on every chip that uses our designs.” 

The Arm computing platform is unlike any other in the semiconductor industry today. It is so pervasive that Arm estimates that 70% of the global population uses products with its technology and has a 99 percent share of the $30 billion market for smartphone chips. “There are three things that are the focus for everything that we do: performance, power efficiency, and software. We uniquely bring those three forces together and that's what helps us to build world-class products” said Will Abbey, Arm EVP & Chief Commercial Officer.

The Power of the Arm Partnership

Thanks to a leading technology ecosystem of over 1,000 trusted partners, Arm has built the most pervasive CPU architecture in history. Its technology has been utilized in more than 250 billion chips, powering everything from televisions, smartphones, tablets, drones, and gaming consoles to smart home devices, smart cities, smart cars and supercomputers. Arm’s partners span the semiconductor, electronics, and auto industries, including Nvidia (NVDA), Intel Foundry (INTC), Broadcom Inc. (AVGO), Marvell Technology, Inc. (MRVL), GlobalFoundries (GFS), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOGL), Meta (META) and more. 

In fact, Nasdaq’s Trade Surveillance technology, its Data Link marketplace, and its Cloud Data Service all run on Graviton 3 chips, powered by Arm CPUs. “We liked the idea that Arm shares are traded on an Arm-based platform. We were very taken by that,” said Thornton.  

Arm's business model has allowed many companies to license and use processor technology that would be too difficult to create from the ground up. However, the real strength of Arm is the connection between its CPUs and the software ecosystem. In the mobile market, Arm has decades of software investment across the Android and iOS platforms. According to Arm, more than 15 million developers worldwide have written software on its software ecosystem.

“The millions of apps that just work on smartphones are a result of investments and optimizations by our software ecosystem. With an Arm-based CPU in virtually every smartphone on the planet, developers have the access they need to innovate on a common software platform,” said Thornton. 

“So, if you are an app developer, and have a really good idea for a new game, a new productivity tool, or just something that can be a bit fun to go into a smartphone or a tablet, you only need to write the software once, because they all use an Arm processor. This is the formula that drove Arm’s success in the mobile market and that formula is repeatable across other end markets,” he added.

Now, Arm is expanding its accessibility, enabling access for companies in other markets such as servers, consumer electronics, IoT and infrastructure.

-Will Abbey, Arm EVP & Chief Commercial Officer

The Future of Arm

Entering its second term as a public company, Arm remains committed to developing technology that will power the future of computing, like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. “AI on Arm is literally everywhere—Arm CPUs already run AI and ML workloads in billions of devices, and we’re seeing it explode across customer applications and endpoints. In areas of intense computing power like large language models and generative AI, there will be a heightened emphasis on the low power acceleration of these algorithms, which is Arm’s focus. In fact, in our latest ISA, CPUs, and GPUs, we have added new functionality and instructions to further accelerate future AI and ML algorithms—that's our growth story.” said Abbey.

In addition to staying at the forefront of technological advancements, the company will continue growing its partnerships, including the automotive market. As carmakers increase the computing power requirements within their vehicles, Arm strives to be a natural partner for car companies, from engine management to assisted-driving technology.

“We're going to continue to grow in infrastructure and data center applications as well. With the growing data demands and increasing difficult power constraints in this space, the Arm processor with its performance-per-watt efficiency advantage is perfect,” said Abbey.

“The scale of Arm’s reach continues to expand, because everything today is a computer, and with the advent of the AI era, the world’s computing needs are continuing to grow substantially. It’s an exciting future, and a future being built on Arm,” he added.

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