Arm CEO promoted to head Softbank’s international operations

Haas will continue to act as Arm CEO while managing SBGI.

Softbank’s announcement stated: “Rene Haas, Chief Executive Officer of Arm Holdings plc and a member of the SoftBank Group Board of Directors, will assume the extended role of Chief Executive Officer of SoftBank Group International (“SBGI”). SBGI is an operating platform that oversees certain international subsidiaries of SoftBank Group Corp.In this expanded role, Mr. Haas will support coordination across companies in the SBGI portfolio focused on semiconductors and artificial intelligence, with the aim of further enhancing operational efficiency. He will continue to serve as Chief Executive Officer of Arm and remain a member of its Board of Directors.”

Haas is expected to coordinate these subsidiaries’ activities into becoming an AI hardware/software systems business.

Arm chips are already being used for processors developed by AWS, MS, Meta and Google and Softbank owns AI chip developers Graphcore and Ampere.

Softbank has a project named Izanagi to develop AI chips to challenge Nvidia’s.

It is said that Masa Son, Softbank’s chairman, wants to move the company from being largely an investment group to being  an integrated, AI-centric industrial group.

It is also said that Son is looking for a successor.

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