Arm’s CEO insists the market needs its new CPU. Everyone can get angry

Rene Haas Half-prone on the couch in his office in San Jose, California. In his hand is a basketball that partially obscures his face. Haas was scowling when a WIRED photographer first asked him to take the position. The headlines immediately came to mind: “People will say: ‘Arm CEO sleeps on the job.’”

However, Haas sticks to it. He gives us 46 minutes of his time, then kicks us out so he can make a call with us Masayoshi’s sonCEO of Softbank and Chairman of Arm’s Board of Directors.

I will meet Haas just days before the chip company’s important event advertisement They release their own silicone. For a company that made its fortunes by licensing its architectures to other chip companies and never making its own products, the move represents a big bet. Apple, Tesla, NvidiaMicrosoft, Amazon, Samsung and Qualcomm all make or sell Arm-based chips, either licensing the chip designs or paying royalties to the company. It is estimated that there are three arm segments for every human on Earth.

However, if we look another way, making the chip represents a return to ARM’s roots. The company dates back to the late 1970s, when two computer engineers founded Acorn Computers, which produced a microprocessor built on an architecture known as RISC. By the early 1990s, the company was struggling, and the then-CEO focused on licensing its designs to other companies. Fast forward to mid-2010, Arm’s power-efficient mobile chip designs helped make it the world’s most important chip IP company.

The arm’s path wasn’t entirely smooth. After Softbank acquired Arm in 2016 and took the publicly traded company private, the growth of the smartphone market slowed. Arm had to make a strong push into new lines of business. In 2020, Nvidia tried to poach it and regulators blocked the deal. When that deal collapsed, in 2022, Haas took over as CEO. He took Arm public again, with Softbank continuing to own 90 percent of the company.

Haas joined Arm in 2013 from Nvidia, where he led the computing products business unit, eventually acquiring Arm’s cash cow, its IP portfolio. Similar to the way the CEO of Nvidia did Jensen Huang Drawing on his decades-long perspective on the industry — gather around the campfire, kids, while I tell you about the early days of parallel computing — Haas is quick to point to the geopolitical chaos of the 1980s when asked if current events make him worried about his business. (no). He told me he has met with President Donald Trump six times, but he is not particularly concerned about US government interference in his company’s UK affairs. He is tall, though not particularly ominous, and often wears Saint Laurent shoes with small heels, a jacket, and a Panerai watch.

Chip industry insiders say Haas, 63, is an accomplished networker who collaborates with the biggest names in technology. The Wall Street Journal once described him as a “natural diplomat.” But with this chip project, one of the Valley’s darkest secrets, Arm and Haas risk angering some of the company’s most loyal partners. Would you stay with your loved ones if, after years of polite dinner parties, you announced that you were buying their house? Haas seems convinced he can.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Lauren Goode: Since I’ve been CEO, people say there’s been a huge change in culture. Do you agree with this assessment?

Rene Haas: The thing I learned — I knew this intrinsically when I worked at Jensen, but I certainly internalized it when I took this role — is that the CEO sets the tone for the company.

My training, which ultimately develops who you are as a leader, was really accelerated by moving to Silicon Valley 30 years ago, working with a few startups and then working for Nvidia. The common theme among all of these companies is that I was working for the founders. At the time I couldn’t tell you, “Oh, working with founders, this is the kind of environment I fit into.” But looking back, I think that’s where my DNA was formed, and it’s where I found the environment in which I thrive.