Industry Expert Blogs

Since being acquired by SoftBank, ARM’s vision for the future has even more purpose. We are investing, we are growing and we are mapping out how to fulfill our destiny as the company creating technologies that deliver a secure, intelligent and hyperconnected world. It is a new growth phase for ARM and incredibly exciting, but this is a story that began well before SoftBank first approached us with an acquisition in mind one year ago. I go back to the first time I met Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s CEO and chairman in 2006. We were swapping views on the future of technology at SoftBank’s offices overlooking Tokyo harbor.

I took an immediate liking to Masa as he was, and still is, a visionary entrepreneur who genuinely cares about what technology can do for people. Then, I was an ARM company executive vice president, having spent 15 years leading engineering and business functions, and it was part of my job to think about tomorrow. It was clear that we shared a similar vision for how technology would influence the world, but I could not have suspected that a decade later I’d be flying to a seaside town in Turkey to hear Masa propose something extraordinarily bold. He wanted the company I now lead as CEO to be central in his plans for the future of technology.

A year after that meeting, not only is ARM part of the rapidly expanding SoftBank technology family, but I am honored to have been elected to the SoftBank Board. ARM is already a global success story. It has evolved from a company of 12 engineers working out of a converted barn in Cambridge, UK, into a worldwide organization whose technology is in more than 95 percent of smartphones, laced throughout the growing Internet of Things and shipped in more than 100 billion silicon chips. ARM’s business model, and the fact we count a diverse ecosystem of major technology players as partners, have helped us to become the foundation of the advanced computing world. From that foundation, ARM, as well as being at the heart of the technology world, now has the chance to play a leading role in guiding the sector’s destiny.

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