‘Surge’ In Nvidia Grace CPUs Contributes To Record Arm Market Share Estimate

Mercury Research estimates that a ‘strong ramp’ of Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell GB200 Superchips contributed to Arm CPU market share crossing into the double digits for the first time. A top Nvidia partner says he isn’t surprised and expects that momentum to continue.

A CPU-tracking firm said a “surge” of Nvidia’s Grace CPUs shipped as part of the AI computing giant’s Grace Blackwell GB200 Superchips contributed to its estimate that Arm CPU market share crossed into double digits for the first time.

Mercury Research said on Thursday that Arm’s total CPU market share, which includes the server and client segments, grew 2.3 points sequentially to an estimated 11.9 percent against x86 CPUs from Intel and AMD in the first quarter of this year.

In an email to journalists, Mercury Research President Dean McCarron said this marked “the first time Arm has had a double-digit share when compared with the x86 market,” but he cautioned that his firm’s estimates for Arm processors “may have substantially higher error than x86 CPUs due to differences in data sources.”

However, he said, the “strong ramp” of Nvidia GB200 products is “easily substantiated.”

This activity drove Mercury Research’s estimate for Arm-based server CPU share “significantly higher on quarter,” growing to 13.2 percent in the first quarter after the estimate “exceeded 10 percent for the first time in the fourth quarter,” according to McCarron.

McCarron told CRN that his estimate for Arm server CPU shipments includes those made by any company participating in the market, including Nvidia and Ampere Computing as well as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

As for client CPUs, McCarron said Arm’s estimated market share in the segment grew 3 points to 13.9 percent against x86 products by Intel and AMD in the first quarter.

While shipments for Apple’s Mac computers packing custom, Arm-compatible processors “were lower,” Mercury Research noted a “modest increase” in Arm CPUs going into Copilot+ PCs, according to McCarron. Currently, the only Arm CPUs for Copilot+ PCs are the Snapdragon X Series processors designed by Qualcomm.

What mainly drove Arm’s estimated share growth in the client segment “was a large increase in shipments of processors into Chromebooks,” according to McCarron. While Arm-based CPUs for Chromebooks are mainly designed by MediaTek, Qualcomm is reportedly planning to start shipping Snapdragon X Plus chips for such devices this year.

However, McCarron said that Arm’s growth in the Chromebook segment wasn’t unique, with Intel’s N-series processors for such devices also seeing an increase in shipments.

“While our absolute unit estimate (and thus total share) may have significant error, the increase in Arm Chromebook activity in the past quarter also strongly supports a large increase in Arm CPU shipments into the segment,” he wrote.

Nvidia Says It ‘Incredibly Ramped Up’ GB200

Mercury Research’s report came out less than three months after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that his company “successfully and incredibly ramped up Grace Blackwell, delivering some $11 billion in revenues” in the fourth quarter of its 2025 fiscal year, which ended in January.

This resulted in Blackwell becoming Nvidia’s “fastest product ramp” yet.

Huang made the remarks during Nvidia’s fourth quarter earnings call in late February, where he noted that major customers and partners like Microsoft, OpenAI and CoreWeave are bringing their own GB200 NVL72 platforms online.

“And you're starting to see many come online,” he said.

Promoted as the way to get the highest performance from its Blackwell GPU architecture, the GB200 NVL72 is Nvidia’s rack-scale server platform that consists of 36 interconnected GB200s, each of which contain a Grace CPU and two Blackwell GPUs.

A senior executive at a top U.S. Nvidia channel partner told CRN on Thursday that Mercury Research’s estimates fall in line with his expectation that Nvidia’s growing embrace of Arm will result in Arm growing CPU market share against x86 chips.

“These supercomputers based on Grace Blackwell and future systems, I think people are underestimating the size that these are going to carry,” said Andy Lin, CTO and vice president of strategy and innovation at Houston, Texas-based Mark III Systems.

Lin said he also expects Arm’s momentum to continue because of Nvidia’s plan this year to release Arm-based PC platforms, namely DGX Spark, powered by the GB10 Superchip, and DGX Station, powered by the GB300 Superchip.

These lower-end systems will likely serve as a starting point for some customers and, consequently, “drive adoption across all form factors,” according to the executive.

“I think that will give the critical mass to be able to reshape overall CPU market share in favor of Arm,” Lin said.