ARM Poaches Amazon AI Chip Chief; Accelerates Custom Silicon Shift

TradingKey - According to Reuters, global semiconductor intellectual property giant Arm has successfully hired Rami Sinno, former head of Amazon’s artificial intelligence (AI) chip division, reflecting the company’s latest progress in accelerating strategic transformation and building an in-house chip development team.

Sinno’s recruitment followed nearly six months of negotiations. During his tenure at Amazon, he led the development of the Trainium and Inferentia series AI chips — products optimized for building and running large-scale AI applications, renowned in the industry for their high performance and energy efficiency — which are expected to provide Arm with deep technical expertise.

To secure Sinno, Arm offered a highly competitive compensation package including a $5 million annual base salary, restricted stock units valued at approximately $20 million, and a bonus plan deeply tied to product roadmap milestones.

This compensation scale not only underscores Sinno’s rare industry value but also reflects the intensifying global AI talent war, as tech giants spare no expense to secure core teams in the race for technological supremacy in AI and high-performance computing.

Currently, a semiconductor IP supplier designing processor core architectures and instruction sets for licensing to clients (collecting royalties from chips sold by customers), Arm is advancing a business transformation toward independently designing and manufacturing complete chips.

CEO Rene Haas announced in July that Arm plans to allocate portions of its profits toward manufacturing its own chips and other components, exploring new paths beyond traditional design—such as developing smaller, modular, function-specific chips and possibilities for full-system solutions.

As part of this broad expansion initiative, Arm has been actively building teams for complete chips and systems, recently recruiting heavyweight executives including Nicolas Dube, former HP executive, and Steve Halter, a veteran chip engineer with experience at Intel and Qualcomm.

At Monday’s U.S. market close, Arm shares rose 1.55% to $141.06.

Source: TradingKey