COF vs ARM Comparison

Capital One is a diversified financial services holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia. Originally a spinoff of Signet Financial's credit card division in 1994, the company is now primarily involved in credit card lending, auto loans, and commercial lending. Following the acquisition of Discover in 2025, the firm also has a modest personal loan business, though credit card lending still provides the majority of the bank's revenue.

Arm Holdings is the IP owner and developer of the ARM architecture, which is used in 99% of the world's smartphone CPU cores, and it also has high market share in other battery-powered devices like wearables, tablets, or sensors. Arm licenses its architecture for a fee, offering different types of licenses depending on the flexibility the customer needs. Customers like Apple or Qualcomm buy architectural licenses, which allow them to modify the architecture and add or delete instructions to tailor the chips to their specific needs. Other clients directly buy off-the-shelf designs from Arm. Both off-the-shelf and architectural customers pay a royalty fee per chip shipped.