What company does everyone reckon is likely to be the next to sign a licence?
My guess is Arm.
The most obvious reason is that our technology is fully compatible with Arm's product family. Then there's Arm's powerful position on power efficiency (see below), which is only surpassed by BrainChip's position on power efficiency and reduced energy consumption. On top of that you also have the report last week from Nikkei Asia that Arm has a prototype AI chip planned for early 2025 and full-scale manufacturing penciled in for fall 2025 as a part of Softbank's "AI Revolution" plans.
I think that this "prototype" idea is something that has been bubbling away for quite some time because all the way back in April 2023, it was reported that Arm was working on its own chip. The project was said to have started 6 months earlier, around October 2022, spearheaded by former Snapdragon designer and Qualcomm executive Kevork Kechichian.
In terms of time-frames, BrainChip joined Arm's AI Parter Program in May 2022. And in December 2022, Brainchip joined Intel's IFS IP Alliance. It has been reported recently that Arm would be likely to work with Intel IFS on their prototype endeavour.
Coincidentally (or not), one of the tidbits that came out of the lawsuit between Arm and Qualcomm in 2022 was that apparently Arm would stop licensing its CPU designs after 2024 and would instead require OEMs to directly license their chips from ARM cutting out the middlemen, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung, etc.
The lawsuit between Arm and Qualcomm goes to trial in September, so it'll be very interesting to see what happens there. But at any rate, the prospect of Arm making it's own chips looks likely to threaten the interests of quite a few players, particularly Qualcomm. So I find the timing in all of this very intriguing to say the least.
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