Rene Haas is reclining on the couch in his office in San Jose, California. He holds a basketball in his hand, partially covering his face. Haas grimaced when a WIRED photographer first asked him to assume this position. The headlines came to him immediately: “People will say Arm’s CEO is sleeping on the job,” he says.
Still, Haas obliges. He gives us 46 minutes of his time and then shooes us away so he can jump into a conversation with Masayoshi Son, CEO of Softbank and chairman of the board of Arm.
I’m meeting with Haas just days before the chipmaker’s substantial announcement to launch its own silicon. For a company that made a fortune licensing its architecture to other chipmakers and never producing its own, this move is a huge challenge. Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung and Qualcomm produce or sell Arm-based chips, either by licensing the chip designs or paying royalties to the company. It is estimated that there are three Arm chips for every person on Earth.
However, looking from the other side, making the chip means Arm’s return to its roots. The company’s history dates back to the slow 1970s, when two computer architects founded Acorn Computers, which produced a microprocessor based on an architecture known as RISC. In the early 1990s, the company went into decline and the then-CEO began licensing his designs to other companies. Quick forward to the mid-2010s, and Arm’s energy-efficient mobile chip designs helped it become the world’s most vital IP chip company.
Arm’s trajectory was not silky. After Softbank acquired Arm in 2016 and took the publicly traded company private, the growth of the smartphone market slowed. Arm had to aggressively enter fresh areas of activity. In 2020, Nvidia tried to acquire it, but regulators blocked the deal. After that deal fell through in 2022, Haas took over as CEO. He took Arm back public, and Softbank still owns 90 percent of the company.
Haas joined Arm in 2013 from Nvidia, where he led the computer products business unit, and eventually acquired Arm’s cash cow, the IP product group. Like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, he leans on his long-term perspective on the industry – kids, gather around the fire and let me tell you about the early days of parallel computing – Haas is quick to allude to the geopolitical chaos of the 1980s when asked if current events make him worried about his company. (No.) He tells me that he has met with President Donald Trump a half-dozen times, but is not particularly concerned about U.S. government interference in the affairs of his British company. He is towering, although he does not have a particularly bad feeling, and often wears low-heeled Saint Laurent shoes, a jacket, and a Panerai watch.
Chip industry insiders say Haas, 63, is an excellent networker who is friends with some of the biggest names in the technology industry. The Wall Street Journal once called him a “born diplomat.” But in the case of this chip design, one of the most loosely kept secrets at Valley, Arm — and Haas — may upset some of the company’s most devoted partners. Can you remain best friends when, after years of polite parties, you announce that you’re buying their house? Haas seems confident he can.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Lauren Goode: Since you became CEO, people say there’s been a substantial cultural shift. Do you agree with this assessment?
Rene Haas: The one thing I’ve learned – I knew it from the ground up working for Jensen, but I certainly internalized it as I took over here – is that the CEO sets the tone for the company.
My training, which ultimately shapes who you are as a leader, was really accelerated by moving to Silicon Valley 30 years ago, working with several startups, and then working for Nvidia. The common theme in all these companies is that I worked for the founders. I couldn’t then say, “Oh, working with founders, that’s the environment I resonate with.” But looking back, I think that’s where my DNA was formed and where I found the environment in which I thrive.