Last month, Nvidia officially confirmed that its acquisition of Arm was being terminated due to complications with convincing regulators that the merger would not affect Arm’s free licensing model. Softbank (Japanese investment company and current owner of Arm) is on the hook for a $1.25 billion fee.
Following the failed acquisition, The Telegraph reports that Arm’s new CEO Rene Haas told staff on Monday that the company faces redundancies that “could affect up to 1,000 employees”. Arm employs 6,400 staff and 3,500 of them are in the UK.
Haas explains to staff that most layoffs will be in the UK and US. The following is an excerpt from an email written by Haas, as seen by The Telegraph.
This is going to be a tough time for everyone, so I want to be clear on why we are doing this. ”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 […] 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.
Last month, Softbank confirmed that it planned to make Arm public in attempt to recuperate some of the losses from the failed acquisition. These layoffs are part of that plan to lower costs, thus maximizing appeal to investors ahead of its initial public offering.