Arm is releasing the first in-house chip in its 35-year history Rebecca Szkutak 12:48 PM PDT · March 24, 2026 Storied semiconductor and software company Arm Holdings is starting to make its own chips after nearly 36 years of licensing its designs to companies like Nvidia and Apple.
At an event Tuesday in San Francisco, the company revealed the Arm AGI CPU , a production-ready chip built for running inference in an AI data center. The UK-based company developed the chip using its Arm Neoverse family of CPU IP cores and through a partnership with Meta.
Meta is also the chip’s first customer of the Arm AGI CPU, which is designed to work harmoniously with the tech company’s training and inference accelerator. Arm also counts OpenAI, Cerebras, and Cloudflare, among others, as launch partners.
Arm’s transition to making its own silicon has been anticipated for some time. The company started developing the chips back in 2023, according to CNBC reporting , and the processors are already ready to order.
TechCrunch reached out to Arm for more information regarding the timeline of the chip’s development and release.
While it might have been expected, the move is a historic deviation from Arm’s long tradition of exclusively licensing its designs to other chipmakers. The company, which is majority owned by Japanese conglomerate Softbank Group, will now be competing alongside many of its partners.
The fact that Arm is producing a CPU, as opposed to GPU, is also notable. GPUs, or graphics processing units, have drawn a lot of attention because they are used to train and run AI models. CPUs are an equally important part of a data center rack.
Techcrunch event Disrupt 2026: The tech ecosystem, all in one room Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $400. Save up to $300 or 30% to TechCrunch Founder Summit 1,000+ founders and investors come together at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 for a full day focused on growth, execution, and real-world scaling. Learn from founders and investors who have shaped the industry. Connect with peers navigating similar growth stages. Walk away with tactics you can apply immediately Offer ends March 13. San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 REGISTER NOW In its pro-CPU pitch, Arm notes that these chips manage thousands of distributed tasks, including managing memory and storage, scheduling workloads and moving data across systems. The CPU has become the “pacing element of modern infrastructure — responsible for keeping distributed AI systems operating efficiently at scale,” the company said.
This puts new demands on CPUs and requires an evolution of the processor, Arm said.
In March, Intel and AMD told their customers in China that wait times for their products would be longe r due to CPU shortages, Reuters originally reported. Computer prices have also started to rise amid the growing shortage.
Rebecca Szkutak Senior Reporter, Venture
Becca is a senior writer at TechCrunch that covers venture capital trends and startups. She previously covered the same beat for Forbes and the Venture Capital Journal.
You can contact or verify outreach from Becca by emailing rebecca.szkutak@techcrunch.com . View Bio June 9 Boston, MA Actively scaling? Fundraising? Planning your next launch? TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 delivers tactical playbooks and direct access to 1,000+ founders and investors who are building, backing, and closing.
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