The Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost

The Hidden Force Behind the AI Revolution: Arm CEO Rene Haas

Feb 2, 2026

Rene Haas, CEO of Arm and veteran semiconductor executive, explains Arm’s rise from low‑power mobile CPUs to a central role in AI compute. He discusses CPU vs GPU, Arm’s IP licensing and shift to compute subsystems, partnerships with Nvidia, Apple and OpenAI, China vs US advantages, and why curiosity and hardware skills matter for future careers.

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INSIGHT

Arm's Central Role In The Chip Value Chain

Arm is an IP company that designs CPUs and licenses them to chip builders who then manufacture the full system on chip.
This disaggregated model lets Arm power the "brain" of virtually every electronic device without owning fabs.

INSIGHT

CPUs And GPUs Are Interdependent In AI

Modern AI stacks pair GPUs with CPUs; NVIDIA's Grace CPU is based on Arm IP and works alongside Blackwell GPUs.
This interdependence highlights Arm's strategic importance to AI data‑center architecture.

ANECDOTE

Born From The Apple Newton Project

Arm traces its origins to the Apple Newton project and a design focus on low power and efficiency in the early 1990s.
The founders licensed that CPU design, which enabled a global software ecosystem to form around the architecture.

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Rene Haas is CEO of Arm Holdings, the British chip designer at the heart of the global AI race and the previous smartphone revolution. Haas explains to Wilf in plain English where Arm sits in the semiconductor value chain, why its CPU designs power virtually every tech device on the planet, and how its partnerships with giants like Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and OpenAI are shaping the next decade of computing.

They discuss Arm’s evolution from a low‑power chip design for the Apple Newton to becoming the “brain” inside billions of smartphones, to powering the data centres that are driving the AI revolution. He reflects on the company’s surging revenues as AI workloads explode, and as its revenue model evolves, including the possibility of whether Arm should move closer to full chip design in its own right. Haas also tackles big strategic themes: data centres versus AI-at-the-edge, the “valuation bubble” and “overinvestment bubble” that exists in the short term, but why mega-cap tech names like Apple, Nvidia, Google Microsoft and Amazon will still thrive – scale. Haas also assesses the respective advantages China and the US have over each other from energy to talent to execution.

Haas offers a candid take on Britain’s strengths and shortcomings as a tech hub, what it would take to build the next hyperscaler here, and why risk appetite and scale still lag the US and China. He closes with career advice for young people on how to future‑proof themselves in an AI‑driven economy, the skills Arm hires for, and why curiosity and embracing AI will matter more than any single qualification.

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