Arm Faces Major Risk: FTC Examines Licensing, Competition, and New AGI Chip

Arm Holdings, a company that develops the Arm architecture used by firms like Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung Electronics, and MediaTek, is reportedly under scrutiny by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). According to Bloomberg, the authority is assessing whether the company has adopted practices aimed at improperly strengthening its dominant position in the semiconductor architecture market.

The investigation particularly concerns Arm's licensing system, a cornerstone of the British company's business model. The FTC is verifying whether some clients have received limited access to the most advanced designs or, in extreme cases, have been excluded from certain strategic licenses. This is a particularly sensitive issue given how central the Arm ecosystem has become in the mobile device industry and increasingly in data centers dedicated to artificial intelligence.

Tensions surrounding Arm have intensified following the legal dispute with Qualcomm, which arose after the U.S. company acquired Nuvia in 2022. Arm argued that the licenses obtained by Nuvia could not be automatically transferred to Qualcomm and that new agreements were necessary to continue using designs based on the Arm architecture.

However, the lawsuit concluded in favor of Qualcomm, which retained the right to use the Oryon cores developed from Nuvia's technologies. This clash has strained a historic relationship between the two companies and has amplified accusations of anti-competitive behavior directed at Arm.

As a consequence of these developments, Qualcomm has reportedly initiated a global campaign with various regulatory authorities, involving not only the FTC but also the European Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission. The South Korean agency had conducted an inspection at Arm's offices in Seoul in November 2025.

Meanwhile, Arm's influence in the semiconductor sector continues to grow. While the x86 architecture still maintains a dominant position in traditional desktop and notebook PCs, the spread of Arm-based platforms is rapidly increasing thanks to Apple Silicon chips and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X family. In the mobile sector, Arm represents the benchmark standard across the industry.

Regulatory authorities' attention has been further intensified by Arm's decision to directly enter the proprietary processor market. In March, the company announced a processor called AGI intended for AI data centers, marking a stark shift in strategy from the past, where the focus was almost exclusively on licensing technology.

This evolution has raised concerns among some historic partners, who now see Arm not only as an architecture provider but also as a potential direct competitor. Although it has not introduced solutions for the consumer market, the entry into complete chip design could raise questions about the company's neutrality toward licensees.

According to some market analyses, the Arm architecture could assume a dominant role in AI servers over the next few years, with over 90% of custom processors expected to utilize Arm designs by 2029. This scenario makes control over access to the licenses and technologies developed by the company even more strategic.