One of the most significant technology companies in the world is located somewhere outside of Cambridge on a business park that would go unnoticed by a passing motorist. The offices don’t stand out. There are no billboards or TV commercials using the name ARM Holdings. However, ARM’s fingerprints can be found in almost every smartphone on the planet. Apple’s iPhones, Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones, and Google’s Pixel phones are all powered by processors derived from ARM-designed and licensed blueprints. Not a single chip is produced by the company. It has never done so. However, modern mobile computing most likely wouldn’t exist in its current form without it.
Most people are unaware of how far back the story begins. A British company called Acorn Computers was booming in the early 1980s thanks to the BBC Micro, a device that was installed in about 80% of British classrooms. To keep up with a shifting market, Acorn required a processor that was quicker and more effective. Its engineers, particularly Sophie Wilson and Stephen Furber, looked into scholarly research from the University of California, Berkeley rather than purchasing one off the shelf. Reduced Instruction Set Computing, or RISC, is a simplified approach to chip design that was described in that study. Less complexity, less heat, and significantly less power consumption resulted from fewer instructions. The Acorn RISC Machine is the chip that Acorn created using these concepts. Even after the meaning changed, the ARM acronym remained.
A new business emerged from the 1990 partnership between Apple and Acorn to develop a processor for the Newton handheld device. It inherited the ARM name, which is now an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines, as well as a design philosophy that prioritizes efficiency. Even though the mobile era was still years away, that philosophy proved to be perfect for it. Everything about a battery-operated device is low power consumption. Intel eventually realized this, but by then ARM had a ten-year advantage and connections with all of the world’s leading chip manufacturers.
ARM’s chosen business model is truly unique. Processors are not manufactured by the company. It creates and grants licenses for CPU architectures. Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, and MediaTek are just a few of the chip companies that pay ARM to use its instruction sets or core designs, which they then use to build their own chips. The majority of Snapdragon processors found in Android phones, Apple A-series chips found in iPhones, smart TVs, and automobile infotainment systems can be traced back to ARM licenses. Every chip that is shipped earns the business a royalty. It’s possible that no other technology company in the world has organized its earnings in a way that is both elegant and long-lasting.
From the outside, it appears that ARM’s low public profile is almost intentional. Infrastructure has always been the company’s preference over a brand. No one brings up ARM when a smartphone review praises Qualcomm’s Snapdragon.
The underlying architecture receives, at most, a footnote when Apple’s M-series chips receive breathless coverage. The royalties continue to come in regardless of who receives credit, so it makes sense that ARM would feel at ease with that arrangement.
All of this is driven by large numbers. In 2016, SoftBank paid £24.3 billion to acquire ARM, which some observers felt was a high price. Due to worries about competitive concentration, regulators in the US, UK, and EU ultimately forced Nvidia’s 2020 attempt at its own acquisition, which valued the company at about $40 billion. With a valuation of about $54.5 billion, ARM went public on the Nasdaq in 2023. In fiscal year 2025, revenue was $4 billion. These are impressive numbers for a company with about 8,300 workers that has never produced a tangible product.
It is worthwhile to consider Intel’s exclusion from this narrative. Intel’s x86 architecture dominated computing for many years. Intel made several attempts to enter the mobile market when smartphones became popular. It never really took off. The ecosystem that ARM had created—dozens of chip companies all designing within the same architectural family—proved to be unassailable, and the company’s power efficiency was just too strong to overcome. In terms of mobile chip architecture, ARM no longer has any significant rivals. It’s not a small detail. It’s the whole tale.
It’s difficult to find anything about this that isn’t subtly striking. There aren’t many technology companies in Britain that have actually influenced the global industry. The exception is ARM, which originated from academic research, was developed in a business park in Cambridge, and is currently present in over 250 billion chips that are shipped globally. The majority of people are unaware of it. That’s probably how the tech companies that pay Cambridge royalties like it.
