Arm, one of Britain’s biggest technology companies, is to cut hundreds of jobs after the collapse of its $40 billion sale to Nvidia, the American technology company.
Rene Haas, Arm’s new chief executive, told staff yesterday that the redundancies would affect 12-15 per cent of its global workforce, with most of the job losses in the UK and United States.
Arm said that it was “continually reviewing its business plan to ensure the company has the right balance between opportunities and cost discipline”. It added: “Unfortunately, this process includes proposed redundancies across Arm’s global workforce.”
Based in Cambridge Arm employs about 6,400 people globally with about 3,500 in the UK. The planned job cuts, first reported by The Telegraph, raised concerns among union bosses.
Mike Clancy, general secretary of the Prospect union, said that Arm was one of the “most important providers of high-quality tech jobs in the UK” and the plans would concern “thousands of Arm employees worried about their jobs”.
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He added: “We always knew there was a risk once the sale to Nvidia fell through that the company would seek to restructure or cut costs. We urgently need leadership from government now to protect British jobs and R&D spending.”
Nvidia agreed to buy Arm from SoftBank, the Japanese technology conglomerate, in September 2020 in a cash and shares deal. However, SoftBank halted the sale last month amid scrutiny from regulators over competition concerns, including in the UK. It has been exploring a float of Arm instead.
SoftBank bought Arm, which was formerly listed in London, for £24 billion in 2016. It was founded in 1990 as a joint venture between Acorn and Apple and is considered the most successful technology group to have emerged from the UK in decades.
Arm’s technology is used by chipmakers, including Samsung Electronics and Apple, to produce their processors. its designs are used in smartphones and other connected devices and the company is a big player in the semiconductor industry, which underpins critical infrastructure.
In an email to staff, seen by The Telegraph, Haas said it “is going to be a tough time for everyone” and “to be successful in the opportunities we have ahead of us, we need to be more disciplined about our costs and where we’re investing”.
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He added: “To stay competitive, we need to remove duplication of work now that we are one Arm; stop work that is no longer critical to our future success; and think about how we get work done. It’s essential that we focus on activities that will move our strategy forward at pace.”
