Korea's Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has carried out an on-site investigation of Arm's office in Seoul, according to a report published by The Korea Times. The article cites unnamed sources — which is standard practice for the publication — and says the raid is tied to allegations of unfair market practices involving Arm's long-running licensing dispute with Qualcomm. The KFTC declined to comment on the report.
According to the report, the investigation focuses on whether Arm has improperly limited access to its chip-architecture technologies after years of maintaining a more open and widely accessible licensing model. The inquiry reportedly stems from a complaint Qualcomm filed in March with antitrust authorities in Korea, the United States, the European Union, and other jurisdictions. Qualcomm alleges that Arm restricted it from continuing to use licenses originally held by Nuvia, the custom-CPU startup Qualcomm acquired in 2021 that is responsible for the design of its powerful Snapdragon X Elite processors and their soon-to-be-released successors.
