The British chip designer itself flagged several risks in its IPO prospectus, ranging from its China business to geopolitics, but one potential threat has gained traction as its listing nears.
It’s called RISC-V, pronounced “risk five” — a rival chip design that is backed by some of Arm’s own customers.
While analysts told CNBC it’s not an immediate threat, Arm itself warned that if it gains traction, it could pose a competitive risk.
What is RISC-V?
To understand RISC-V, let’s consider what Arm actually does. Arm designs what’s known as an instruction set architecture (ISA) for chips known as processors or central processing units (CPUs). These chips can be thought of as the brain of an electronic device.
Arm’s ISA is effectively the blueprint for processors that other companies, from Apple to Qualcomm, base their chips on.
Arm charges these companies licensing fees to use its technology to build their own chips. It also gets royalties when these chips are produced and go into end devices. Arm’s designs underpin processors in 99% of the world’s smartphones.
RISC-V, meanwhile, is an entirely different instruction set architecture. RISC stands for reduced instruction set computer.
The main difference is that RISC-V is open-source, meaning it’s free to use.
“If RISC-V-related technology continues to be developed and market support for RISC-V increases, our customers may choose to utilize this free, open-source architecture instead of our products,” Arm said in its IPO prospectus.
Is RISC-V gaining traction?
RISC-V in recent years has gained support from some of the world’s biggest technology companies, many of which are also Arm customers.
Google, Samsung, Qualcomm and Nvidia, for instance, are part of a consortium formed in 2020 to develop RISC-V-based technologies.
Arm warned that if this development is successful, there could be a viable alternative to its architecture.
“Although the development of alternative architectures and technology is a time-intensive process, if our competitors establish cooperative relationships or consolidate with each other or third parties, such as the recently announced joint venture focused on RISC-V, they may have additional resources that would allow them to more quickly develop architectures and other technology that directly compete with our products,” Arm said in its IPO prospectus.
He suggested that other players were worried that if a major customer like Nvidia controlled Arm, it could be a disadvantage to some of Nvidia’s rivals.
The proposed takeover “raised a lot of hackles in the industry” and some Arm customers are “starting to think twice” about their dependency on the company, Windsor told CNBC this week.
“Maybe we should have a second source just in case things start not going in our direction, or we have problems with Arm,” he added, in reference to the thinking among some Arm customers.
Is RISC-V a threat to Arm?
The general consensus is that, right now, RISC-V doesn’t pose a major threat to Arm. That’s because the technology is currently far inferior to Arm’s offering.
“The issue with RISC-V is it’s much more immature. It doesn’t have the same level of support for more advanced designs,” Peter Richardson, research director at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.
“RISC-V is quite far away from being at that leading edge, but for some workloads not at the cutting edge, then RISC-V can work quite well.”
One of Arm’s big successes is its huge customer base of major tech players. This has allowed Cambridge, England-based company to build an “ecosystem” of companies that rely on its technology — an advantage that RISC-V doesn’t have.
“Whenever you devise software that runs on one Arm, it will run on all the others as well,” Herman Hauser, founder of Acorn Computers, the company behind the first Arm chip, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday. “So I think Arm will continue to retain its dominant position.”
However, there are fears that Chinese companies in particular could view RISC-V as a cheaper — and more appealing — alternative, particularly if Arm increases its prices.
“If Arm raises its prices, what are chip designers in China going to do? They’re probably going to go for the free version. I wouldn’t be surprised if China really scales up on RISC-V,” Cyrus Mewawalla, head of thematic intelligence at Global Data, told CNBC this week.
(L-R) Apple CEO Tim Cook, Vivek Ramaswamy and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. President in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
While the stock market broadly fared better on Monday than in the prior two trading days, Apple got hammered once again, losing 3.7%, as concerns mounted that the company will take a major hit from President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The sell-off brings Apple’s three-day rout to 19%, a downdraft that has wiped out $638 billion in market cap.
Apple is one of the most exposed companies to a trade war, analyst say, due largely to its reliance on China, which is facing 54% tariffs. Although Apple has production in India, Vietnam and Thailand, those countries also face increased tariffs as part of Trump’s sweeping plan.
Among tech’s megacap companies, Apple is having the roughest stretch. On Monday, the only stocks to drop in that group of seven were Apple, Microsoft and Tesla.
The Nasdaq finished almost barely up on Monday after plummeting 10% last week, its worst performance in more than five years.
Analysts say Apple will likely either need to raise prices or eat additional tariff costs when the new duties come into effect. UBS analysts estimated on Monday that Apple’s highest-end iPhone could rise in price by about $350, or around 30%, from its current price of $1,199.
Barclays analyst Tim Long wrote that he expects Apple to raise prices, or the company could suffer as much as a 15% cut to earnings per share. Apple may also be able to rearrange its supply chain so that imports to the U.S. come from other countries with lower tariffs.
A customer checks Apple’s latest iPhone 16 Plus (right) and Apple’s latest iPhone 16 Pro Max (left) series displayed for sale at Master Arts Shop in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on Sept. 26, 2024.
Firdous Nazir | Nurphoto | Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs could lead Apple to raise the price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max by as much as $350 in the U.S., UBS analysts estimated Monday.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max is Apple’s highest-end iPhone on the market, and currently retails for $1,199. UBS is predicting a nearly 30% increase in retail price for units that were manufactured in China.
Apple’s $999 phone, the iPhone 16 Pro, could see a smaller $120 price increase, if the company has it manufactured in India, the UBS analysts wrote.
Shares of Apple have plummeted 20% over the past three trading days, wiping out nearly $640 billion in market cap, on concern that Trump’s tariffs will force the company to raise prices just as consumers are losing buying power.
“Based on the checks we have done at a company level, there is a lot of uncertainty about how the increased cost sharing will be done with suppliers, the extent to which costs can be passed on to end-customers, and the duration of tariffs,” UBS analyst Sundeep Gantori wrote in the note.
Apple, which does the majority of its manufacturing in China, is one of the most exposed companies to a trade war. China has a potential incoming 54% tariff rate — before new increases were proposed Monday. Smaller tariffs were also placed on secondary production locations, such as India, Vietnam and Thailand.
JPMorgan Chase analysts predicted last week that Apple could raise its prices 6% across the world to offset the U.S. tariffs. Barclays analyst Tim Long wrote that he expects Apple to raise prices, or it could suffer as much as a 15% cut to earnings per share.
If Apple were to relocate iPhone production to the U.S. — a move that most supply chain experts say is impossible — Wedbush’s Dan Ives predicts an iPhone could cost $3,500.
Morgan Stanley analysts on Friday said Apple could absorb additional tariff costs of about $34 billion annually. They wrote that although Apple has diversified its production in recent years to additional countries — so-called friendshoring — those countries could also end up with tariffs, reducing Apple’s flexibility.
After last week’s “reciprocal tariff announcement, there becomes very little differentiation in friend shoring vs. manufacturing in China — if the product is not made in the US, it will be subject to a hefty import tariff,” Morgan Stanley wrote.
Last week, the firm estimated that Apple may raise its prices across its product lines in the U.S. by 17% to 18%. Apple could also get exemptions from the U.S. government for its products.
Kimbal Musk, co-founder of The Kitchen Community, speaks during the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, May 3, 2016.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Elon Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal, took to the social network X on Monday to lambaste President Donald Trump’s tariffs, calling them a “structural, permanent tax on the American consumer.” He also said Trump appears to be the “most high tax American President in generations.”
“Even if he is successful in bringing jobs on shore through the tariff tax, prices will remain high and the tax on consumption will remain the form of higher prices because we are simply not as good at making things,” Kimbal Musk wrote on X, one of the companies in his brother’s extensive portfolio.
The younger Musk owns a restaurant chain called The Kitchen, is a board member at Tesla and a former director at SpaceX and Chipotle. He has also co-founded and invested in other food and tech startups, including Square Roots, an indoor farming company, and Nova Sky Stories, a creator of drone light shows that he bought from Intel.
Elon Musk is a top advisor to Trump, overseeing the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an effort to drastically cut federal spending, largely through layoffs, and consolidate or eliminate agencies and regulations. However, his relationship with some key figures in the Trump administration has been showing signs of strain in recent days as the president’s sweeping tariffs have led to a dramatic selloff in stocks, including for Tesla, which is down 42% this year and just wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022.
Over the weekend, Elon Musk took aim at Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro, disparaging his qualifications in a post on X.
“A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” Musk wrote, after Navarro told CNN on Saturday that “The market will find a bottom” and that the Dow will “hit 50,000 during Trump’s term.” It’s currently at about 38,200.
Musk also said that Navarro hasn’t built “sh—.” Navarro told CNBC on Monday that Musk is “not a car manufacturer” but rather a “car assembler,” dependent on parts from Japan, China and Taiwan.
Tesla was seeking a more moderate approach to trade and tariffs in a recent letter to the U.S. Trade Representative.
According to Federal Election Commission filings, Kimbal Musk this year has contributed funds to the Libertarian National Committee and Libertarian Party of Connecticut. In 2024, while his brother became the biggest financial backer and promoter of Trump, Kimbal donated to Unite America PAC, a group that markets itself as a “philanthropic venture fund that invests in nonpartisan election reform to foster a more representative and functional government.”
A representative for Kimbal Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.