Zhitong Finance learned that as the battle for dominance of AI chips intensifies, SoftBank Group subsidiary Arm (ARM.US) plans to launch artificial intelligence chips next year, according to reports on Sunday. According to reports, this chip design company headquartered in the UK will set up an artificial intelligence chip division to build a prototype by spring 2025. The report added that SoftBank is discussing the production of artificial intelligence chips with contract manufacturers including TSM.US. Mass production is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2025.

Currently, Arm is responsible for designing the basic architecture of the chip. It then sold licenses for its designs to companies such as Qualcomm (QCOM.US) and Nvidia (NVDA.US), charging royalties on every sale they make. The company claims that 99% of high-end smartphones use Arm technology.

According to estimates by Canadian Precedence Research, the current market size of AI chips is 30 billion US dollars, which is expected to exceed 100 billion US dollars by 2029 and 200 billion US dollars by 2032. Nvidia currently has an absolute leading position in the field of AI chips, but it is also unable to meet growing demand, and SoftBank sees an opportunity in this.

SoftBank, founded and headed by Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, is betting heavily on artificial intelligence. According to reports, the company plans to invest 960 million US dollars by next year to improve its generative AI computing facilities. In June of last year, Sun Zhengyi stated that SoftBank wanted to “take a leading position in the artificial intelligence revolution.” According to reports, SoftBank hopes to establish artificial intelligence data centers driven by local chips in the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East as early as 2026.

According to reports, Arm will bear the initial development costs of artificial intelligence chips, which could reach “hundreds of billions of yen.” After the large-scale production system is established, Arm's artificial intelligence chip business may be “spun off and placed under SoftBank.” SoftBank holds up to 90% of Arm's shares.

Currently, in the field of AI chips, Nvidia has taken the lead, and other chip giants are also continuing their efforts to gain a place in the strongly developing AI chip market. For example, Intel (INTC.US) launched a new generation of AI chips Gaudi 3 in April; AMD (AMD.US) CEO Su Zifeng also emphasized at the beginning of this month that in order to speed up and catch up with Nvidia, a new AI chip will be introduced later this year.

Meanwhile, other tech giants are also working hard to develop AI chips to get rid of their dependence on Nvidia, and have launched or plan to launch self-developed AI chips. For example, Microsoft previously launched an AI server acceleration chip Azure Maia; Meta Platforms (META.US) announced in April that it will launch a new self-developed chip to enhance its artificial intelligence services; Apple (AAPL.US) is also reportedly putting high-end chips (similar to chips designed for Macs) into cloud computing servers to handle the most advanced artificial intelligence tasks on Apple devices; in addition, Amazon (AMZN.US) AWS and Google's parent company Alphabet ( GOOGL.US) is also trying to get rid of its dependence on expensive chips.

According to LSEG data, Arm's stock price has risen nearly 45% so far this year, with a market capitalization of more than 113 billion US dollars. The company was acquired by SoftBank in 2016 for $32 billion and listed on NASDAQ last year.