The US competition and consumer protection regulator is probing whether Arm is trying to illegally monopolise parts of the semiconductor market, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential probe.
“The FTC is looking to determine if Arm will refuse or lower the quality of licenses for blueprints to develop central processing units – the brain of a computer – while ramping up efforts to develop its own chips,” said the people.
“Earlier this year, the US regulator notified Arm of the investigation and demanded the company preserve documents,” the people said.
A spokesman for the FTC declined to comment.
Arm shares slid less than 1% to US$207.96 in late trading Friday.
The stock had nearly doubled this year through the close, outpacing the benchmark Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index.
Arm, which is majority-owned by SoftBank Group Corp, historically hasn’t made its own chips.
Rather, it sells chip designs and licenses a so-called instruction set – code used by software to communicate with processors.
Chipmakers including Qualcomm Inc and device makers such as Apple Inc rely on Arm licenses for their products.
Regulators outside the US are also looking into Arm’s practices, spurred in part by Qualcomm, Bloomberg has reported.
Qualcomm’s 2024 complaint with the European Commission accused Arm of trying to restrict access to licenses and withholding key technology.
Last year, competition authorities in South Korea conducted unannounced inspections at Arm’s offices in Seoul, as part of a similar investigation.
Arm declined to comment on the investigations. However, in a statement, the company said “Qualcomm’s baseless allegation of anticompetitive conduct is nothing more than a desperate and underhanded attempt to obtain leverage in the parties’ ongoing commercial dispute for its own competitive benefit”.
A Qualcomm spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The FTC investigation is the latest escalation in a global fight between the companies.
Qualcomm had opposed a bid by artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia Corp to acquire Arm – a takeover that failed in 2022.
In 2021, Qualcomm purchased Nuvia Inc and sparked a breach-of-contract fight over use of the startup’s Arm license. Qualcomm won in court, though Arm is appealing.
Both companies are trying to position themselves to ride a boom in computing – for everything from desktops to AI systems – as demand becomes more sluggish for the smartphone chips that fueled much of their growth in recent years.
Qualcomm, the No 1 maker of chips that run phones, contends that Arm created a heavy reliance on its technology through an open licensing model, which also fostered a thriving semiconductor industry.
However, Qualcomm maintains that Arm’s announcement in March of plans to design its own processors – a move that could generate US$15 billion annually within five years – are indicative of fears that Arm will limit access to its technology.
Arm’s plans have been welcomed by dozens of others in the industry, from customers including Alphabet Inc’s Google and Amazon.com Inc, as well as chip peers such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Under CEO Rene Haas – who has also recently taken on an executive role with SoftBank – Arm has shifted from its roots as a provider of smartphone technology and taken a greater role in the data centre market.
The change is meant to help the business get more of the money generated by what is often complex and expensive work.
Arm contends that its expansion to chipmaking is at the behest of its customers, who are looking for alternatives to Intel Corp and AMD.
Shortly after Arm’s announcement, AMD data centre executive Forrest Norrod welcomed the competition. “It keeps us on our toes and keeps us running very fast,” he said.