Arm is looking at selling proprietary chips, reports Reuters, and one of its first customers is Meta.

The hyperscalers are looking at using ASICs for their datacentres to avoid the high cost of Nvidia GPUs.

According to Reuters, a recruiter working for Arm sent a message to an executive at an Arm customer saying Arm wanted to hire an executive to help with its “transformation from solely designing processor architecture (IP) to also selling its own silicon, with a focus on driving AI enablement in the data center” and on other devices.

At the recent Arm v Qualcomm trial,  Qualcomm’s lawyers produced of a strategy document  written by Arm’s CEO and presented to the Arm board which envisaged Arm building its own chips.

 

When asked about it, Rene Haas replied that Arm didn’t build chips but he always had to look to the future.

Arm was built on the business model of treating all customers equally and not competing with them.

A reason for Arm’s success was that mobile computing players did not want to see the x86 monopoly in the PC industry repeated in the mobile industry.

Arm is making a big bet on its future in moving away from its model. The attitude of major licensees will determine its fate