By Greg Gao
(JW Insights) Oct 12 -- Several employees of Arm China have left the company and established a local chip design firm named Borui Jingxing(博瑞晶芯), according to media reports.
Insiders suggest that among the employees leaving Arm China are a head of research and development, a regional sales director, and a government relations staff. The latter is currently serving as the CEO of the newly-founded compan, which has been supported by the local government in Shenzhen. The company, established two and a half years ago, aims to raise funds and recruit engineers, including those from Arm, Bloomberg reported on October 12.
Arm Borui is also a major new Arm licensee and aims to devise chips for servers, said the industry insider.
Arm, whose chip designs power most of the world’s mobile devices including Apple Inc.’s iPhone, is grappling with a US-Chinese conflict over technology that has uncertain implications for foreign operators. Now, several investors have told Bloomberg News they are concerned Borui could eventually divert revenue from the China venture, in part because of the uncertainty that’s surrounded the operation in past years.
Borui’s business isn’t a threat to Arm China and rather it will benefit the venture by boosting revenue within the country. Arm China in February laid off about 100 employees, most of them from the R&D team, and some of those have joined Borui, the people familiar with the matter said.
A Borui Jingxin representative said in an e-mail that it’s a customer of Arm China and doesn’t compete with or have any conflicts of interest with the venture. It said it designs chips for “cloud computing and edge controllers.”
Borui has started actively recruiting engineers. On recruiting website Zhipin.com, it’s offering senior engineers an annual package as high as RMB1.1 million ($150,720). Its core team came from celebrated chip design firms and has two decades of work experience on average, according to the job posts, according to the Bloomberg report.
