Arm was notified by the US Federal Trade Commission in early 2026 that it was the subject of an antitrust investigation after the chip designer said it would begin engineering its own processors, according to Bloomberg. The FTC is examining whether Arm used its dominant position in chip licensing to deny or downgrade the quality of CPU blueprints it licenses to others in order to disadvantage riva

Arm is preparing to expand beyond its traditional IP licensing business by introducing data center CPUs, positioning itself to compete directly with some of its own customers, including AWS, Google, and Nvidia, while maintaining rapid growth in licensing revenue driven by rising demand for AI infrastructure.