Arm Holdings

Semiconductor Intellectual PropertyFounded 1990- HQ today: Cambridge, United Kingdom

Leadership History

Arm Holdings: CEO History

4 leaders · 1991 to present

Who is the CEO of Arm Holdings?

Rene Haas is the CEO of Arm Holdings, in the role since 2022. The first chief executive was Robin Saxby, from 1991.

Current CEO: Rene Haas (since 2022)
First CEO: Robin Saxby (1991)
Leaders documented: 4
Founded: 1990

Name	Role	From	To	Years in role
Rene Haas	Chief Executive Officer	2022	Present	4
Simon Segars	Chief Executive Officer (Former)	2013	2022	9
Warren East	Chief Executive Officer (Former)	2001	2013	12
Robin Saxby	Founding Chief Executive Officer	1991	2001	10

Who was CEO of Arm Holdings before Rene Haas?: Simon Segars was CEO of Arm Holdings from 2013 to 2022, before Rene Haas took over in 2022.

Company Overview

Arm, based in Cambridge in the UK, designs processor architectures but does not manufacture chips. It writes the instruction set and core designs that other companies build on. Chips based on Arm designs power the iPhone, Samsung Galaxy phones, Apple's Mac computers and the Amazon Kindle, and the architecture is used in almost every smartphone because of its power efficiency. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Rene Haas

Chief Executive Officer

2022 – Present

4 years (current)

Key Decisions & Impact

Haas earned an electrical and electronics engineering degree from Clarkson University and completed an executive programme at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He spent seven years at Nvidia as vice president and general manager of its computing products business before joining Arm in October 2013 as vice president of strategic alliances, later becoming chief commercial officer and then chief executive in 2022. His most consequential decision so far is the move from licensing designs to selling silicon with the AGI CPU, which puts Arm in competition with customers it has long served as a neutral supplier.

Legacy

Rene Haas became Arm's chief executive in February 2022, succeeding Simon Segars after nine years at Arm in engineering and commercial roles. He led the company through its September 2023 Nasdaq listing, refocused it on semiconductor IP after the SoftBank-era platform businesses were divested, and pushed Neoverse into cloud and AI infrastructure, where Arm says data center royalties more than doubled in fiscal 2026. In August 2025 he sold the Artisan foundation IP business to Cadence, and in March 2026 he took Arm into a market it had avoided for 35 years by launching the AGI CPU, a data center processor Arm designs and sells as finished silicon, with Meta as lead partner. Fiscal 2026 revenue reached $4,920 million, a third straight year of growth above 20% since the IPO.

Source →

Simon Segars

Chief Executive Officer (Former)

2013 – 2022

9 years

Key Decisions & Impact

Segars studied electronic engineering at the University of Sussex and took a master's in computer science at the University of Manchester before joining Arm in 1991. His most consequential and ultimately unsuccessful decision was backing SoftBank's $40 billion sale of Arm to Nvidia in 2020, a deal that regulators in the United States, United Kingdom and European Union opposed, forcing SoftBank to take Arm public instead.

Legacy

Simon Segars was chief executive for nine years from July 2013, overseeing SoftBank's 2016 acquisition, the attempted sale to Nvidia and the expansion of Arm's IoT strategy through the Treasure Data and Stream Technologies acquisitions, both of which were later unwound. He joined Arm in 1991 as one of its early engineers and worked on chip design for two decades before running the company. He left in February 2022, months after the Nvidia deal ran into regulatory opposition, and was succeeded by Rene Haas.

Source →

Warren East

Chief Executive Officer (Former)

2001 – 2013

12 years

Key Decisions & Impact

East spent eleven years at Texas Instruments before joining Arm in 1994, where he set up the company's consulting business, then became vice president of business operations and, within three years, chief operating officer. He was appointed chief executive in October 2001 and kept Arm out of manufacturing and out of selling chips, concentrating instead on widening the licensee base and pushing the architecture into markets beyond handsets. He went on to run Rolls-Royce Holdings from 2015 until the end of 2022.

Legacy

Warren East ran Arm for twelve years from October 2001, the period in which the company became the default architecture for mobile computing. He established the Cortex processor families that replaced the numbered ARM cores, built out the Mali graphics line after the 2006 Falanx acquisition, and presided over the licensing relationships with Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung and the wider Android supply chain that turned smartphone volume into royalty growth. He announced his retirement in March 2013 and left on July 1, 2013.

Source →

Robin Saxby

Founding Chief Executive Officer

1991 – 2001

10 years

Key Decisions & Impact

Saxby took an electronic engineering degree at the University of Liverpool in 1968 and worked at Motorola and European Silicon Structures before Arm. He built the licensing model around volume rather than margin, betting that a low per-chip royalty across many partners would beat a high fee from a few, and he was knighted in the 2002 New Year Honours for services to the UK semiconductor industry. He handed over to Warren East in October 2001.

Legacy

Robin Saxby was Arm's founding chief executive, recruited in 1991 to run the new joint venture from a converted barn at Swaffham Bulbeck near Cambridge with 12 engineers seconded from Acorn. His defining decision was to license processor designs rather than manufacture chips, a model with no precedent in the semiconductor industry of 1990. Under Saxby, Arm signed the licensing deals that made its architecture the standard for mobile handsets, established the per-chip royalty that still produces most of its profit, and completed the April 1998 dual listing in London and New York.

Source →

Challenges & Strategic Context

RISC-V is the challenge Arm is asked about most, and the realistic version of it is narrower than displacement. The open instruction set is royalty free and is gaining ground in microcontrollers, embedded designs and among Chinese chip firms reducing exposure to Western licensed IP, but its software ecosystem is far behind the 22 million developers and mature toolchains behind Arm, so the nearer-term pressure is erosion in specific segments rather than a frontal attack on smartphones or servers. Geopolitics is the second constraint: revenues from the PRC were about 18% of Arm's fiscal 2026 total, they reach Arm largely through Arm China, a venture Arm neither owns nor controls, and export restrictions already limit what Arm can license to some Chinese customers. Third, Arm now sells its own data center silicon, the AGI CPU launched in March 2026, which puts it in the same market as licensees it has always served as a neutral supplier and adds manufacturing, inventory and channel risks the licensing model never carried.

Arm Holdings CEO and Leadership FAQ

Who is Rene Haas and what is his track record as CEO of Arm?

Rene Haas, formerly vice president of computing products at Nvidia, became Arm chief executive in February 2022 after running its IP products group. He took Arm public on Nasdaq in September 2023 at a valuation of about $54.5 billion, expanded Compute Subsystems and Neoverse in the data center, sold the Artisan foundation IP business to Cadence in 2025, and launched Arm's first production silicon, the AGI CPU, in March 2026.

Who was Simon Segars and what were his achievements as Arm CEO from 2013 to 2022?

Simon Segars, an early founding engineer who joined Arm in 1991 and designed early ARM7 and ARM9 cores, served as CEO for 9 years, overseeing the $32 billion acquisition by SoftBank in 2016 and orchestrating the proposed (later terminated) sale to NVIDIA.

Who was Warren East and how did he scale Arm into a global tech leader from 2001 to 2013?

Warren East was chief executive from October 2001 until July 1, 2013, twelve years in which Arm established the Cortex CPU and Mali GPU families and became the standard architecture for smartphones. He announced his retirement in March 2013 and was succeeded by Arm president Simon Segars.

Who was Sir Robin Saxby and why is he considered the commercial architect of Arm?

Sir Robin Saxby was Arm's founding chief executive from 1991 to October 2001. He chose to license processor designs for a fee plus a per-chip royalty rather than manufacture chips, a model with no precedent in the semiconductor industry, and took the 12-person Cambridge venture to a dual listing in London and New York in 1998.

What was Masayoshi Son's vision in SoftBank's $32 billion acquisition of Arm in 2016?

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son paid 24.3 billion pounds, about $31.4 billion, for Arm in a deal agreed in July 2016 and completed that September, taking it private to invest in R&D and IoT for a future he described as a trillion connected devices.

Why was the proposed $40 billion acquisition of Arm by NVIDIA terminated in 2022?

In February 2022, NVIDIA and SoftBank mutually terminated their proposed $40 billion merger after facing insurmountable regulatory antitrust opposition from the U.S. FTC, UK CMA, European Commission, and global licensees who feared losing neutral IP access.

Who is Jason Child and what is his role as Chief Financial Officer of Arm?

Jason Child has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Arm since November 2022, leading the financial execution of Arm's 2023 NASDAQ IPO, capital markets strategy, and investor relations.

How does the Arm Board of Directors maintain corporate governance post-IPO?

Arm's Board includes independent semiconductor and technology industry veterans alongside SoftBank representatives, overseeing R&D capital allocation, compliance with international export regulations, and executive incentive plans.

Who is the CEO of Arm?

Rene Haas serves as CEO, successfully steering the company through its massive 2023 IPO after Nvidia's attempt to buy the company was blocked by regulators.

Related Leadership Timelines

Compare executive leadership tenures and strategic transitions

Competitor

Explore Arm Holdings

Core profile pages, founders and related research hubs for this company.