The UK government should have taken a golden share in semiconductor designer Arm “a long time ago” and any attempt to do so now is “trying to close the gate after the horse has bolted”, according to the company’s co-founder Hermann Hauser.
In an exclusive interview with UKTN, Hauser – who co-founded Acorn computers, which later span out chip company Arm – slammed British politicians as “technologically illiterate” and the “root cause” of the current wrangling over the company’s future.
Arm parent company SoftBank, the Japanese technology conglomerate, is weighing up a public listing in both London and New York. It follows the collapse of Arm’s $40bn merger with US tech giant Nvidia.
UK politicians, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have recently joined the lobbying effort to persuade SoftBank to float the company often referred to as the jewel in the crown of British tech in London....