From little Acorn

How computer firm grew into the UK’s tech giant

1978 Acorn Computers

The British company founded by Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry helped many programmers get their first taste of computing. Its computers included the BBC Micro and the Acorn Electron.

1990 ARM founded

Acorn, Apple and VLSI Technology group together to spin the chip division out of Acorn with 12 staff. ARM stood for Advanced RISC Machines: RISC stood for “reduced instruction set computing”.

1993 Selected by Nokia

ARM provided chips for Apple’s Newton, but when an up-and-coming phone manufacturer named Nokia selected it for the upcoming 6110 handset, its modern era really began.

1998 IPO

ARM Holdings lists on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq at a £246m valuation. A year later, it would join the FTSE 100 but suffer amidst the dotcom bubble bursting at the turn of the century.

2013 CEO change

Chief executive Warren East, who led the company for 12 years, steps down to be succeeded by Simon Segars, who was ARM’s 16th employee when he joined the company in 1991.

2016 Takeover offer

After 18 years as a public company, ARM recommends a £24.3bn offer from Japan’s SoftBank. The deal will lead to Britain’s biggest listed technology company being taken private.