5% Of The Cloud Now Runs On Arm As Chip Designer Plans 2023 IPO

Three major hyperscalers – AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud – deliver as much as 5 percent of the world's computing power using Arm CPUs.

This revelation was disclosed on Tuesday amid SoftBank's Q3 2023 earnings call.

"In the space of cloud, initially, the share was 0 percent. But we're working with Amazon, Google and Microsoft, those big cloud players, which have adopted Arm's chip technology. So accordingly, Arm has grown market share from 0 percent to 5 percent," said SoftBank CFO Yoshimitsu Goto.

According to Synergy Research Group and Statista, the trio represent 66 percent of the global cloud infrastructure market in the three months ending September 30.

The market research firm tallied the industry at $217 billion for the 12 months prior – 5 percent of which rounds out to $10.8 billion. This doesn't yet account for Alibaba, which clocked in at 5 percent market share, and Oracle, 2 percent, which also likely have at least some of their own Arm CPUs.

Whatever the true number is, 5 percent of the market going to Arm represents an erosion of the market to existing players and a growing industry-wide indication that the power-efficient Arm CPUs could be the right solution in crowded datacenters.

• Qualcomm readying new Arm server chip based on Nuvia acquisition
• AWS puts latest homebrew Graviton3 Arm processor in production
• AWS follows AMD and Intel down the specialized chips path
• Arm still strong despite SoftBank loss as shipments pass a quarter of a trillion

AWS, for one, has aggressively marketed its Graviton3 processor, which debuted in December 2021 and includes 64 ARM-compatible CPU cores and employs the company's 256-bit Scalable Vector Extensions.

Arm claimed $746 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2022, a rise of 28 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile, SoftBank reported a net loss of $5.9 billion, thanks to the myriad startups it supports and their falling valuations.

Other segments where Arm is gaining market share are mobile, in which the company said share grew from 90 percent in 2016 to 95 percent in 2021; IoT, which grew 30 percent to 63 percent; and automotive from 10 percent to 24 percent.

The confidence is clear. Arm CEO Rene Haas told Reuters on Tuesday that the company was committed to a stock market float this year.

Haas referred to the IPO plans as "well developed and under way."

"We're doing everything we can and are committed to have it happen this year," said the exec. ®