Arm COO Will Abbey on AI chips, power efficiency, and why Arm is building silicon

At Web Summit Rio 2026, Arm's Chief Operating Officer Will Abbey discusses the company’s move into building its own chips, after decades of licensing the architecture behind smartphones, PCs, cars, data centers, and AI infrastructure. The conversation covers why Arm sees silicon as a new way for customers to access its technology, how AI workloads are changing compute requirements, and why performance per watt is becoming a central constraint for the industry. Will also discusses Arm’s position in the broader AI ecosystem, the limits of measuring AI adoption by token usage, supply challenges in AI chips, the geopolitics of compute, security and IP protection, public concerns around data centers, and what agentic AI could mean for consumers over the next few years. 00:00 — Opening and Arm’s move from blueprints to silicon 02:33 — AI infrastructure, customers and ecosystem strategy 04:12 — Measuring AI usage by outcomes, not tokens 06:31 — Why power efficiency is becoming central to AI 08:36 — Demand, supply constraints and scaling AI chips 10:54 — Geopolitics, security and responsible hardware use 13:42 — Data centers, power demand and public policy 18:34 — Agentic AI and the consumer future Stay connected with Arm: https://www.arm.com/