SoftBank's stock price hits a 24-year high, with ARM and AI playing a significant role.
It is reported that Arm, the world's largest semiconductor IP company, is drafting a new blueprint for the AI era.
Arm has collaborated with global IC design companies, semiconductor foundries, and IP companies to develop a cooperative ecosystem aimed at standardizing AI semiconductor design. This move is intended to accelerate and simplify product development for industry participants.
Arm: The Grand Architect of Chip IP
According to a report by South Korean media ChosunBiz, Arm has established close partnerships with several domestic and international semiconductor companies. The company has signed top-level cooperation agreements with Samsung Electronics' System LSI and Foundry business divisions. IC design companies such as ADTechnology, Asic Land, and Semi-Five provide various IPs for companies like Rebellions and DeepX, which have also signed contracts with this giant.
Arm, which holds over 90% of the global mobile chip market, aims to extend its influence to the AI semiconductor field. Since the 2010s, Arm's design assets have played a key role in mobile AP design, laying an important foundation for the product development of Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung.Arm's standard design has changed the industry trend, allowing even general IT companies to design and produce chips according to their own needs, regardless of their IC design expertise. Arm provides two types of chip licensing services.
Companies with strong design capabilities, such as Apple and Qualcomm, adopt the "full access" approach to design chips with custom cores based on Arm's instruction set. Companies with weaker design capabilities opt for the "flexible access" approach, allowing them to add or modify features on Arm's standard design architecture.
Arm's IP services have thus ushered in an era of competition in mobile chip design. With Apple's successful application of Arm-based APs in the iPhone, Qualcomm and Samsung have also joined the competition.
Many Chinese electronics and IT companies are also developing their own APs based on Arm's design. These APs are not only used in smartphones but also in home appliances and wearable devices, making Arm's IP a "public asset" in the semiconductor market.
AI Era of Arm
As the growth of the mobile market is limited, Arm is redefining its strategy. Since the 2020s, Arm has been seeking new growth opportunities in the AI semiconductor field and expanding its ecosystem with its new AI semiconductor design platform "Neoverse CSS."
Arm recently announced a strategic partnership with AlphaWave Semi to accelerate the development of multi-chip integration (MDI) standard design. AlphaWave Semi has completed chip designs for various industrial fields, including AI, HPC, data centers, and 5G/6G, using Arm's Neoverse CSS platform.
In the 2010s, Samsung introduced its in-house mobile AP "Exynos," based on Arm's design, which was designed and manufactured by its System LSI and foundry business divisions. This had a significant impact on South Korea's semiconductor equipment, materials, and IP ecosystem.
South Korean IC design and foundry companies are looking for new opportunities in the AI semiconductor market. Arm has established high-level partnerships with South Korean companies such as ADTechnology and Semi-Five, and has formed close cooperative relationships with emerging AI semiconductor companies such as DeepX and Furiosa AI.Design and development in the IP field generally shifts to other areas such as IC design within about two years. Arm has been gradually strengthening its ecosystem for many years to accelerate the development of the AI semiconductor market. Through cooperation with Samsung foundries, Korean IC design companies, and design companies, Arm is expected to achieve significant milestones.
SoftBank's stock price hits a 24-year high, with ARM and AI playing a significant role.
SoftBank Group's stock price hit a historical high on Thursday, as the company's massive technology investment department shows signs of recovery, and its outspoken founder, Masayoshi Son, has returned to the public eye to help SoftBank catch the AI express train. In addition, the company also benefits from the success of its chip design company in the public market.
On Thursday, SoftBank's stock price closed at a historical high of 11,190 yen, surpassing the intraday high of 11,000 yen on February 15, 2000, leaving the early 21st-century internet crash and the downturns of 2021 and 2022 far behind.
So far this year, SoftBank's stock price has risen by about 78%. Several analysts attribute this to the successful IPO of Arm, which was acquired in 2016.
Even after the listing, SoftBank still holds about 90% of Arm's shares. As of the close on July 3, Arm's stock price has risen by nearly 124% this year.
Macquarie analyst Paul Golding said, "SoftBank Group's investment strategy and focus have long included developing the AI ecosystem, far earlier than this round of AI enthusiasm that started 18 months ago."In our view, it may be precisely this insight that has, to some extent, propelled SoftBank to acquire Arm in 2016, allowing SoftBank to directly gain insights into the dynamics of the semiconductor market and ownership of intellectual property rights surrounding semiconductor design before this round of AI fervor.
Golding also said that SoftBank's stock has been benefiting from the widely known uses of Arm's intellectual property, such as in the automotive industry or cloud data centers. However, can Masayoshi Son's focus on AI further enhance the value of SoftBank and narrow the discount on its portfolio of assets?
Last year, Masayoshi Son has been out of the public eye. But recently, he has talked about his excitement for the future of AI and how SoftBank has become the center of this technology through investments in companies like Arm.
Last month, Masayoshi Son outlined his vision for a world characterized by artificial superintelligence (ASI). He said that AI 10,000 times smarter than humans will appear within 10 years.
Masayoshi Son's prediction comes at a time when investors are fervently studying how to fully leverage the current round of AI enthusiasm, and the soaring stock price of Nvidia also highlights people's excitement about the technology.
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