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Rene Haas, the chief executive of UK chip designer Arm, is in line to lead a swath of SoftBank Group’s international business in order to accelerate Masayoshi Son’s ambitions in semiconductors and AI.
The new role, which Haas would take on alongside his position as head of Arm, will have oversight of operations including semiconductors, artificial intelligence and possibly robotics, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
The intention was to enable Haas to push forward Project Izanagi, SoftBank’s AI chip strategy to compete with established rivals such as Nvidia, the people said.
They warned the new role was yet to be approved by the boards of SoftBank or Arm and could yet change. Haas was expected to take a title reflecting his role at the top of SoftBank Group International, but was not expected to run SoftBank’s Vision Fund investment vehicles or its energy business, the same people said.
Son, the billionaire founder of SoftBank, wants the group to play a central role in AI through power, robotics, data centres and chip design.
He has mobilised the conglomerate towards that aim, which he believes is the next stage in humanity’s development, pouring tens of billions into OpenAI while buying up chip companies such as Graphcore and Ampere — both of which Haas intends to utilise for the group’s semiconductor plans.
SoftBank’s investment vehicles — the Vision Funds — are also squarely focused on AI. SoftBank is building up infrastructure to support the industry in the US, including the data centre plan called Stargate as well as the world’s largest gas-fired power plant in Ohio, which is being paid for by Japan as part of a trade deal.
The role at SoftBank Group International will not only allow Haas to better co-ordinate Project Izanagi but also make him one of the most senior of Son’s lieutenants. Having previously worked at Nvidia, Haas joined Arm in 2013 before being appointed chief executive close to 10 years later.
Arm, which is roughly 90 per cent owned by SoftBank and went public in 2023, has already unveiled its own AI processor, marking a shift in a business model that was focused on selling blueprints to other chip designers.
The new Arm chip represents the backbone of Son’s semiconductor plans.
Shares in Arm rallied last month after Haas unveiled financial forecasts around the new “AGI CPU”. He predicted it would help drive a fivefold increase in revenue for the $158bn company over the next five years.
The launch of the chip will create a new rival, not only to the traditional central processing units made by Intel and AMD, but also several of Arm’s own customers, including Nvidia, Google and Amazon — although these companies voiced support for the move.
SoftBank and Arm declined to comment.
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