Arm has announced that it’s providing its most powerful edge AI platform, Armv9, to startups via its Flexible Access programme.
The “Flexible Access” model is essentially a ‘try before you buy’ for chip designers. It gives companies upfront, low-cost, or no-cost (for qualifying startups) access to a wide range of Arm technology, tools, and resources. They can experiment and iterate designs freely while only paying license fees for the technology they use in final designs.
This approach has already been a “catalyst for innovation,” according to Arm. The model helped to create around 400 successful chip designs (or “tape-outs”) over the last five years. You’ve likely heard of some of the companies already using it, like Raspberry Pi, Hailo, and SiMa.ai.
The Armv9 edge AI platform pairs the super-efficient Arm Cortex-A320 processor with the Arm Ethos-U85 NPU, which is the bit that handles the heavy AI lifting. This duo is capable of running AI models with over one billion parameters right on the device itself, no cloud connection needed.
This is the tech that will power the next-gen edge AI applications such as smart cameras that don’t just record but understand what they’re seeing, smart home gadgets that learn your habits, and robots you can interact with using vision, voice, and gesture.
Paul Williamson, who runs the IoT business at Arm, believes the next wave of AI innovation will happen “at the edge – in the devices, interfaces, and systems that bring intelligence closer to where data is created.”
A huge benefit here is privacy and security. By processing everything locally, machines can “perceive and respond like humans, while keeping inference and data processing securely on-device”. Your personal data doesn’t have to be sent off to a server just to figure out what you said. The Armv9 platform also bakes in security features like Pointer Authentication Code (PAC) and Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) to keep that on-device data safe.
Research from VDC predicts that, by 2028, AI will be the “dominant technology used across IoT projects”. Arm’s technology is “already at the center of this transformation,” and this move just solidifies its position.
For all the developers keen to get started with edge AI, the Arm Cortex-A320 will be available through the programme in November 2025, with the Ethos-U85 AI processor following in early 2026.
See also: NVIDIA GPUs to power Oracle’s next-gen enterprise AI services
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