According to a Bloomberg report, citing "a memo to staff, according to a person familiar with the matter", Softbank Group, the owner of Arm, plans to lay off as much as 15% of the personnel as it prepares for an IPO after the Nvidia deal fell apart. Most of the cuts will not affect engineering, a media report says, so the ongoing roadmap of the company is not going to be affected as a result of the workforce reduction. As this news has not been officially announced it should be taken with a pinch of salt as we await official news of the layoffs.
Arm intends to cut between 12% and 15% of its staff in the U.K. and the U.S., Rene Haas, chief executive officer of the company, said in an internal memo, according to a Bloomberg report citing a person familiar with the matter. The chip designer intends to cut as many as 1,000 jobs, but most cuts will not affect engineers, according to the report.
Since Arm is currently a private company, it is hard to say how layoffs can improve its cost structure, but normally companies try to make their structures leaner ahead of an IPO.
Arm neither confirmed nor denied its intentions to lay off as many as 1000 people, but it confirmed that it needs to align its headcount with market opportunities and challenges.
“Like any business, Arm is continually reviewing its business plan to ensure the company has the right balance between opportunities and cost discipline,” the company said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this process includes proposed redundancies across Arm’s global workforce.”
It is noteworthy that Arm is planning to reduce its headcount as its rivals from x86 camp — AMD and Intel — are hiring. Just several weeks ago it transpired that Intel began to build a new GPU development team in the U.K. Potentially, this unit can hire specialists from Arm and Imagination Technologies.
