Rene Haas is Half-prone in his San Jose office, California. He has a basketball in his hands, partially covering his face. Haas grimaced at first when WIRED photographer asked him to take this position. His headlines were immediately clear: “People are going to say ‘Arm’s CEO sleeps on the job,'” He says.
Still, Haas obliges. Haas gives us 46 mins of his time and then shoves us out to take a phone call. Masayoshi SonSoftbank CEO and Arm Chairman.
Haas is the first person I meet with just days ahead of the momentous launch date for Haas’s chip company announcement This is the first time it has launched its own silicon. It’s a massive bet by a firm that has built its fortunes on licensing their architectures to others and never manufacturing their own. Apple, Tesla, NvidiaMicrosoft, Amazon and Qualcomm are all companies that make or sell Arm-based chips, whether they license the designs of the chips or pay royalties. It’s been estimated that there are three Arm chips for every human on Earth.
In a different light, however, the creation of a chip is a return to Arm’s origins. Acorn Computers is a firm that dates back to late 1970s when two computer engineers founded it. They produced a microprocessor based upon an architecture called RISC. The company began to struggle in the 1990s and, at that time, its then-CEO decided to start licensing the design to other companies. In the mid-2010s Arm became the leading chip IP provider in the world, thanks to their power-efficient chip designs.
Arm’s journey has not been smooth. The smartphone market’s rapid growth was slowed after Softbank bought Arm in 2016, and the company went private. Arm was forced to aggressively push its business into new areas. Nvidia attempted to buy it in 2020, but regulators stopped the deal. Haas took over the role of CEO when that deal failed in 2022. Softbank owns 90 percent of Arm. Haas brought the company back to public markets.
Haas was recruited by Arm in 2013 after leaving Nvidia where he led its computing products business unit. Haas then took on the IP group, Arm’s biggest cash cow. Like the Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang leans on his decades-long perspective of the industry—gather ‘round the campfire, kids, while I tell you about the early days of parallel computing—Haas is quick to reference 1980s geopolitical chaos when asked whether current events make him worry about his business. (No.) I’m told he has met President Donald Trump at least half a dozen time, and he is not concerned that the US government will interfere in his UK business affairs. His height is average, but not overly intimidating. He wears Saint Laurent booties with low heels, along with a Panerai timepiece and a jacket.
Insiders in the chip industry say Haas is an expert networker and a friend to some of the most prominent names in technology. The Wall Street Journal labeled Haas a “natural-born diplomat.” But with this chip project, one of the most loosely held secrets in the Valley, Arm—and Haas—risk rankling some of the company’s most loyal partners. After years of polite dining parties, can you still be friends with someone if you tell them you are buying their home? Haas appears to be confident that he’ll succeed.
The interview was condensed for clarity and edited lightly.
Lauren Goode: People say there has been a major culture shift since you took over as CEO. Do you agree?
Rene Haas: The thing that I’ve learned—I knew this intrinsically when I worked for Jensen, but I certainly internalized it when I took over here—is that the CEO sets the tone for the company.
The training I received, that ultimately helps you become a better leader, has been accelerated since moving to Silicon Valley in the early 1990s, when I started working at a couple of startups, and later for Nvidia. All of those companies had one thing in common: I worked for the founders. The truth is, I didn’t know at the time. “Oh, working with founders, that’s the kind of environment that I resonate with.” Looking back, I believe that is where my DNA has been shaped. It’s also where I have found an environment where I flourish.
