From the US, Prabowo Heads to UK to Witness Danantara-Arm Semiconductor Partnership
President Prabowo Subianto continued his overseas trip to the United Kingdom following a visit to the United States. Prabowo witnessed the signing of a framework agreement between the Danantara Indonesia Investment Management Agency (BPI Danantara) and Arm Limited in London.
The agreement was signed on Monday (23/2/2026) local time. Prabowo personally attended the signing ceremony as a demonstration of the government’s strong commitment to the prospects of technological advancement and innovation-driven economic transformation in Indonesia.
“This is a partnership for Indonesia to master semiconductor technology, and Arm is one of the companies that dominates the semiconductor market, particularly in terms of design. So this is the most upstream segment of the semiconductor industry itself,” said Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartanto, as quoted by the Presidential Secretariat Bureau on Tuesday (24/2/2026).
Airlangga revealed that Arm currently controls approximately 96 per cent of chip technology for the global automotive sector and nearly 94 per cent of chip designs for data centres and artificial intelligence. Through this partnership, Indonesia is targeting accelerated mastery of strategic technologies that have long served as the foundation for various modern digital innovations.
“With this partnership, it is hoped that Indonesia can train 15,000 of our engineers within the Arm ecosystem, so they can master chip design technology, and the collaboration plan will extend to the next generation of semiconductors or chips, enabling Indonesia to develop capabilities in semiconductors and design,” Airlangga added.
Airlangga further noted that the partnership is a direct follow-up to President Prabowo’s directive to strengthen national technological mastery independently, complementing the government’s broader agenda of building national food security and energy security.
“This is the leapfrog for the digital ecosystem,” he said.
Meanwhile, Investment and Downstream Industries Minister and Head of BPI Danantara, Rosan Perkasa Roeslani, expressed hope that the partnership would deliver wide-ranging benefits for national industrial development. The programme will be carried out by sending experts abroad as well as bringing Arm trainers directly to Indonesia with specially designed training modules.
“There will indeed be six industries selected for the development of these chips, and as the Coordinating Minister mentioned, 15,000 of our engineers will be trained by Arm, either by sending them here or by having their instructors come to Indonesia with their modules,” said Rosan.
Furthermore, Airlangga explained that the six national chip design development areas would focus on strategic intellectual property fields.
“These six represent intellectual property that we can choose from — one for automotive technology, the second for the internet of things, the third related to data centres, then possibly home appliances, and for the remaining two we can choose whether we want futuristic areas, particularly autonomous vehicles and quantum computing, among others. So all of this is still being discussed with Danantara, and the IP will be held by Indonesia,” said Airlangga.