Arm Holdings, the maker of the popular Arm architecture used by Qualcomm, Apple, and several other companies, is facing an antitrust investigation as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) looks into the company’s operation. Bloomberg reports that the FTC is determining if the company is trying to monopolize the Arm architecture and either only give customers lower quality designs for their own semiconductors or outright deny them access to its licenses. The move comes as Arm launched its own AGI CPU focused on data centers in March 2026, a significant departure from the company, whose business previously focused on licensing its chip designs to other companies.
The company’s legal troubles began when it sued Qualcomm, the biggest manufacturer of smartphone chips, for using Nuvia’s ARM licenses after it acquired the startup in 2022. Arm Holdings argued that the smartphone chipmaker cannot use Nuvia’s licenses after its acquisition, and that it should have acquired a new one to continue using the startup’s designs based on Arm licenses. Arm ultimately lost the case, allowing Qualcomm to continue using the Oryon cores it acquired from Nuvia.
