Arm China Eyes Leadership Change As AI Boom And US-China Relationship Reshape Industry

British chip designer Arm Holdings Plc’s ARM Chinese venture is eyeing Chen Feng, a former Rockchip Electronics Co. officer, as its CEO, taking over from co-CEOs Liu Renchen and Eric Chen.

The appointment would be effective after this week’s Lunar New Year holidays, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

Given the limitations of the two co-CEOs’ time, the board appointed Chen Feng as the sole full-time CEO.

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Liu is affiliated with the Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen. At the same time, Eric Chen, who joined the board while a managing partner at the SoftBank Vision Fund, co-founded ParityBit Technologies.

The two co-CEOs have served as interim leaders of Arm China since the company fired Allen Wu in 2022 for alleged conflicts of interest. Arm China has historically accounted for 20% of Arm’s overall sales.  

In 2023, Arm fired 70+ engineers in China after a disappointing sales forecast amid a slump in smartphone sales.

A lot has been brewing in the semiconductor space, including the advent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Nvidia Corp NVDA upping the AI game with its AI GPUs that became critical hardware for developing AI models, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co TSM manufacturing AI chips for Nvidia, Apple Inc AAPL, U.S. semiconductor embargo on China and more.

Additionally, the U.S. welcomed Donald Trump as its President on January 20, who had aggressively campaigned for tariffs against China.

Meanwhile, Chinese startup DeepSeek posed a serious contender to OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc META, triggering a $1 trillion selloff this week.

Arm chip designs mainly cater to smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone.

Arm Holdings stock surged 105% in the last 12 months. Investors can gain exposure to the stock through Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 QQQ, and First Trust NASDAQ-100-Technology Sector Index Fund QTEC.

ARM Price Action: Arm Holdings stock is up 1.43% at $151.60 premarket at last check Wednesday.

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Photo by T. Schneider on Shutterstock