According to a report published by the news agency Reuters, 90-95 employees were laid off last week by SoftBank Group Corp's chip technology business Arm Ltd's China joint venture in an effort of the company to deal with a problem of a bleak business outlook for 2023.
The retrenchment come as SoftBank attempts to list Arm on the stock exchange this year. Although a two-year management dispute at the joint venture resulted in the ousting of the former CEO, the China market has been a major source of growth.
According to two sources, those who lost their jobs were mostly engineers in R&D.
According to one of the sources quoted in the report, there were no layoffs last year when parent company Arm Ltd. experienced global layoffs that affected up to 15% of its workforce. Arm China had about 700 employees before the layoffs.
There was no comment from Arm China.
The layoffs from last year happened after regulatory obstacles prevented Nvidia Corp. from acquiring Arm. The sale's failure represented a significant setback for SoftBank's attempts to raise money at a time when the valuations of all of its holdings are under threat.
The sole distributor of Arm licenses in China is Arm China. It gathers payments and sends them to Arm Ltd, which then gives customers access to the technology.
According to one of the sources, some clients are concerned that Arm may alter how it calculates royalties and that rising geopolitical tensions between the United States and China may prevent them from accessing Arm technology.
Arm's technology has recently been restricted from use by Chinese businesses, including Huawei Group and Alibaba.
(Source:www.reuters.com)
The retrenchment come as SoftBank attempts to list Arm on the stock exchange this year. Although a two-year management dispute at the joint venture resulted in the ousting of the former CEO, the China market has been a major source of growth.
According to two sources, those who lost their jobs were mostly engineers in R&D.
According to one of the sources quoted in the report, there were no layoffs last year when parent company Arm Ltd. experienced global layoffs that affected up to 15% of its workforce. Arm China had about 700 employees before the layoffs.
There was no comment from Arm China.
The layoffs from last year happened after regulatory obstacles prevented Nvidia Corp. from acquiring Arm. The sale's failure represented a significant setback for SoftBank's attempts to raise money at a time when the valuations of all of its holdings are under threat.
The sole distributor of Arm licenses in China is Arm China. It gathers payments and sends them to Arm Ltd, which then gives customers access to the technology.
According to one of the sources, some clients are concerned that Arm may alter how it calculates royalties and that rising geopolitical tensions between the United States and China may prevent them from accessing Arm technology.
Arm's technology has recently been restricted from use by Chinese businesses, including Huawei Group and Alibaba.
(Source:www.reuters.com)
