Meta and OpenAI commit to buying Arm’s first AI server chip as it breaks from its neutral supplier role

Arm, the SoftBank-owned chip design company, announced its first AI server chip, the Arm AGI CPU, with Meta and OpenAI both committing to purchase it, marking a significant departure from Arm's decades-long role as a neutral supplier of chip designs to other manufacturers. Meta's head of infrastructure Santosh Janardhan said the company collaborated directly with Arm on the chip and plans to use it alongside Meta's own in-house AI chip, while an OpenAI spokesperson said the chip will be particularly useful for running multi-step AI agents. Cloudflare and SAP are also among planned buyers, and Arm CEO Rene Haas said the chip can handle AI tasks more efficiently than GPUs, the category currently dominated by Nvidia, whose CEO Jensen Huang nonetheless recorded a congratulatory video for the launch.