Fears for 300 jobs in Arm’s Cambridge graphics division

Hundreds of jobs at Arm’s graphics processing division in Cambridge could face an uncertain future amid a $40bn (£30bn) takeover by US technology titan Nvidia, an MP has warned.

Daniel Zeichner, Labour MP for Cambridge, raised questions at a late night parliamentary debate about employees at Arm who work in graphics processing.

Nvidia, the Silicon Valley company that agreed to a takeover of the Cambridge company, makes its own graphics processors.

“Some 300 people in Cambridge work on graphics processors,” Mr Zeichner said. “An area on which Nvidia also works. It could be a perfect match, or it could mean rationalisations and job cuts. There is little sign of much meaningful consultations of those who work for the company.”

An Arm spokesman said: “Both Arm and Nvidia are leaders in their respective GPU businesses and there is essentially no overlap, there are potential opportunities to work together following closing of the deal. However, until deal closure these activities will remain completely independent. Arm will continue with the committed roadmaps for the foreseeable future.”

Mali, a division of Arm, designs graphics chip technology that it licences to other chip companies. Industry sources said regulators would likely look at whether the combination of the graphics division with a rival chip maker would cause competition concerns and whether it should be offloaded to get the deal through.

It comes after The Telegraph revealed earlier this month that Arm’s internet of things services division, which includes around 500 Arm staff, will not be joining Nvidia. Arm has been looking at options for the division. The company said the division could be “transferred out of Arm prior to closing of the transaction”.

The Government has been looking at the impact of the deal, including whether it has grounds to “call in” the deal to investigate it under the 2002 Enterprise Act. The Prime Minister’s office has said it will “scrutinise in detail” the deal, including its impact on Cambridge.

Arm has around 2,500 staff in the UK and more than 6,000 worldwide. A former UK blue chip, it was acquired by Japanese giant SoftBank in 2016 for £24bn. 

In April, SoftBank began considering its options for Arm and it ultimately agreed a deal with Nvidia.

Nvidia has promised to keep Arm’s headquarters in Cambridge and to build a new artificial intelligence research lab in the city. Jensen Huang, the US company’s chief executive, has said the deal would see Nvidia’s artificial intelligence technology enhance Arm’s chip designs, which are used in billions of smartphones.