ARM licenses chip designs to rivals (1991-2016)
ARM Holdings designed chip blueprints and licensed them to Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, and hundreds of other companies. Its partners competed with each other, but every chip they shipped paid ARM a royalty.
ARM's architecture became the standard for mobile phones, powering billions of devices.
SoftBank bought ARM for $32 billion in 2016, showing that owning the standard can be more valuable than selling the product.
NVLink Fusion is the same play for AI data centers. Nvidia wants every custom chip, even those built by rivals, to rely on its connector standard.
