Arm gearing up for deals and hiring push, boss says
British chipmaker Arm is looking to fuel a dealmaking push and workforce expansion with the cash raised from its initial public offering, the firm’s boss Rene Haas has said.
Haas, who took over leadership of the firm after a blockbuster $66bn merger with US rival Nvidia fell through earlier this year, told the Financial Times that Arm was eyeing an expansion into new areas including cars, data centuries and the hard ware underpinning the Metaverse.
M&A and a hiring push were both potential routes for expansion, he said.
His comments come as Arm’s owner, the Japanese investment giant SoftBank, readies to take the chipmaker public this year in a much anticipated IPO.
SoftBank has been the target of intense lobbying efforts of ministers in the UK who are keen to see the listed in its ‘home market’, but SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son indicated last week that Nasdaq was still the preferred destination for an IPO for the firm.
Economic turbulence has battered publicly listed tech firms this year and scuppered a number of tech IPOs this year, but Haas said that SoftBank remained committed to the plans.
“Masa is very much a long game kind of guy,” Haas said. “If you talk about what’s going on inside the current quarter he’s not really interested.”
He added that the SoftBank was able to open itself up to the public markets, as “the revenue growth is going to be able to support the investment that we need and still hit profitability targets”.