According to Nihon Keizai Shimbun on the 12th, ARM, a subsidiary of Softbank Group, plans to develop artificial intelligence (AI) chips by itself, and strives to launch the first batch of products next year. According to the report, Arm will establish an AI chip department with the goal of creating prototype products by spring 2025 and achieving mass production later that year. The mass production work will be outsourced to chip manufacturers. This plan may increase Arm's development costs by hundreds of billions of yen, with SoftBank Group expected to contribute. Riding the wave of AI, chip design company Arm has attracted attention from the capital market since its initial public offering in September last year. As of now, Arm's stock price has doubled compared to its offering price, with a market value exceeding $100 billion. The current main revenue of Arm is the collection of chip design patent fees. SoftBank Group holds approximately 90% of the shares in Arm Company. Some comments suggest that Arm's success in the capital market has further stimulated SoftBank Group to accelerate its strategic transformation. SoftBank Group's investment strategy is shifting from strategic venture capital trading to strategic investments in semiconductors and artificial intelligence. According to Bloomberg, SoftBank Group is preparing for a possible foray into artificial intelligence and related hardware by selling assets from its flagship vision fund portfolio. In addition to self-developed AI chips, SoftBank also plans to integrate AI with fields such as data centers, robotics, and power plants. Earlier this month, SoftBank led a Series C investment in British autonomous driving startup Wave. Wave said that it has raised 1.05 billion US dollars from this round of investment and will use this fund to develop and launch "embedded artificial intelligence" technology for autonomous vehicle. According to sources cited by Bloomberg on May 8th, SoftBank Group is in talks with AI chip manufacturer Graphcore regarding the acquisition. Sun Zhengyi, founder, chairman, and CEO of SoftBank Group, is very optimistic about the development of artificial intelligence. He stated in an interview in October 2023 that General Artificial Intelligence will completely change industries such as shipping, pharmaceuticals, finance, manufacturing, and logistics. It is worth noting that the current field of AI chip research and development is flourishing. Technology giants such as Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon have all announced plans to expand their expertise in the field of AI chips, in order to meet the demand for AI computing and reduce their reliance on AI chip supply giant Nvidia. (Lai Xin She)