(Reuters) -SoftBank Group’s Arm Holdings plans to develop artificial intelligence chips, aiming to launch the first products in 2025, Nikkei Asia reported on Sunday.
UK-based Arm will create an AI chip division and aims to build a prototype by spring 2025, the report added. Mass production will be carried out by contract manufacturers and is expected to begin in autumn 2025, Nikkei Asia said.
Arm will pay for initial development costs, which could rise to hundreds of billions of yen, with SoftBank contributing, the report said.
Once a mass production system is established, the AI chip business could be spun off and placed under SoftBank, the newspaper said, adding that SoftBank is already in talks with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp and others about manufacturing, seeking guarantee production capacity.
Arm declined to comment, while SoftBank and TSMC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The UK chip designer, who licenses his chip designs and earns funds through royalties, has been expanding into the data center market, where operators are looking to build their own chips to power new AI models and reduce their dependency on from dominant supplier Nvidia.
(Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
