Chip designer Arm is limiting its “blue sky” research with the closure of a flagship tech division and rechanneling its efforts into more commercially viable products ahead of this year’s hotly anticipated public listing.
The Cambridge-headquartered company disbanded Arm Research last year as part of a strategy implemented by chief executive Rene Haas that involved cutting up to 15 per cent of jobs across the business. Arm said at the time that the majority of cuts would focus on general, administrative and other non-engineering functions.
John Biggs, an Arm co-founder who led some of the division’s work partnering with universities to research future applications of chip technology, moved into a part-time role, according to people briefed on the move. Biggs, who has now also joined Pragmatic Semiconductor, another UK chip company in which Arm is an investor, did not reply to a request for comment.