Arm Ltd layoffs will impact 15 percent of the chip giant's workforce. The staff cuts surface roughly one month after an Arm company sale to Nvidia collapsed. Moreover, the layoffs arrive five weeks after Arm named Rene Haas to succeed Simon Segars as CEO.
Arm develops processor designs and software platforms that are very popular for video game, data center and artificial intelligence applications. That intellectual property has "enabled advanced computing in more than 215 billion chips and our technologies securely power products from the sensor to the smartphone and the supercomputer," the company asserts.
Arm's technology also is PSA Certified (previously known as the Platform Security Architecture). The architecture-agnostic security framework and certification program is designed to protect systems, networks, and data from attacks and vulnerabilities, Arm asserts.
Related: See all technology industry company layoffs listed here.
Arm Layoffs: Why Now?
Nvidia announced plans to acquire Arm for $40 billion in September 2020. But that deal collapsed amid antitrust and regulator concerns. In a financial pivot, Arm is now pursuing a potential IPO (initial public offering). Alas, those IPO ambitions have forced the chip giant to improve its overall financial performance. That. in turn, has triggered staff cuts of up to 15 percent worldwide -- or roughly 1,000 positions out of 6,400 team members worldwide will be eliminated, according to widespread reports.
In a statement to BBC, an Arm spokesperson said:
"Like any business, Arm is continually reviewing its business plan to ensure the company has the right balance between opportunities and cost discipline. Unfortunately, this process includes proposed redundancies across Arm's global workforce."
Softbank, Rene HaaS Prepare Arm IPO
Softbank has owned Arm since 2016, and is now seeking to IPO the company. New Arm CEO Rene Haas is overseeing that journey to public markets. He previously was president of the Arm IP Products Group (IPG) since 2017. IPG is a software developer ecosystem that extends across technology infrastructure, automotive use cases and more. Key partners in that ecosystem include Alibaba, Ampere, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bosch, Denso, Mobileye and Telechips, the company indicated.
The overall Arm partner ecosystem spans artificial intelligence, infrastructure and mobile companies.
