TSMC $231m share sale marks full exit from UK chip designer Arm

Arm’s shares fell by more than 7pc as TSMC sold off its final tranche of shares in the UK chip design company.

The world’s largest chipmaker, Taiwan’s TSMC, has sold off its final stake in Arm, the UK chip design company, according to a filing today. The filing says the shares sold over the past few days came to a total of around $231m.

TSMC invested some $100m in Arm at around $51/share during the latter’s IPO in 2023, gradually reduced the position through 2024, and has now fully exited at around $207 a share. According to Reuters, Arm shares fell some 7pc yesterday on the news.

Arm’s recent move into in-house chip making rather than just chip design has attracted much attention in recent times and the announcement of a major deal with Meta in March saw its shares soar, so the dip not likely to cause any major concern for shareholders.

Last month, Meta announced it was partnering with Arm, which is majority owned by Japan’s Softbank, “to develop a new class of CPUs to support growing AI workloads and general purpose computing”.

Here in Ireland, Arm opened a new “state-of-the-art” facility in Galway supported by IDA Ireland, the State’s investment promotion agency, last year.

Since establishing its Irish presence in the county back in 2014, Arm has expanded its staff to 90 locally, while employing more than 4,800 across Europe. The UK company’s presence in Ireland is limited to Galway. The facility at Crown Square in Galway is set to become home to innovative advancements in semiconductor tech, the company said at the time.

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