In a strategic move to deepen its presence in chip manufacturing, Arm Holdings has hired Rami Sinno, a senior Amazon executive who played a critical role in developing the tech giant’s AI chips. As reported exclusively by Reuters, Sinno has joined Arm to support its ambitions of building complete chips—marking a significant pivot from its traditional role as a licensor of processor designs.
Sinno previously led Amazon’s development of Trainium and Inferentia, in-house AI chips designed to train and run large-scale artificial intelligence workloads. These chips aimed to reduce reliance on Nvidia’s GPUs and provide Amazon Web Services with cost-effective, high-performance alternatives for AI applications.
“Hiring Sinno is part of this broader ambition,” Reuters noted. His deep expertise in designing competitive AI processors may prove instrumental as Arm seeks to expand beyond licensing and enter the highly competitive AI chip market—currently dominated by Nvidia, with challengers like Google and Amazon pushing forward.
Traditionally, Arm’s business model has focused on creating processor architectures and instruction sets, which are then licensed to other companies. Industry leaders such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia use Arm’s IP as the foundation for their chips. This model has made Arm the cornerstone of the smartphone processor ecosystem and an emerging force in data center servers.
However, under CEO Rene Haas, the company is shifting gears. In July, Arm announced plans to invest part of its profits into developing proprietary chips and components, including chiplets—modular sections of processors that can be assembled into larger systems—and potentially full systems-on-chip (SoCs).
Reuters also reported that Arm has been actively hiring seasoned semiconductor professionals, including Nicolas Dube (formerly of Hewlett Packard Enterprise) and Steve Halter (ex-Intel and Qualcomm), to bolster its chip development capabilities.
This change in direction aligns with the ambitions of SoftBank Group, Arm’s majority owner, to extract more value from the booming semiconductor sector. By designing and possibly manufacturing its own chips, Arm could generate additional revenue streams beyond royalties.
While Arm’s architecture powers nearly all smartphones globally and is gaining traction in data centers, entering the AI chip segment will be a formidable challenge, given the entrenched dominance of Nvidia and growing competition from cloud giants.
