Chief Executive Officer of ARM & Director, SoftBank
SoftBank looking to develop the largest AI data center in the world: CEO
Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas discusses SoftBank Corp.'s developments as it looks to lead the A.I. data center race on 'The Claman Countdown.' #fox #media #breakingnews #us #usa #new #news #breaking #foxbusiness #theclamancountdown #softbank #arm #renehaas #ai #technology #data #datacenter #business #ceo #tech #innovation #investment #chips #semiconductors
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About Rene Haas
Rene Haas, CEO of Arm Holdings and a director at SoftBank, has been active in public discussions about the company’s role in the expanding AI infrastructure market. In May 2025, Haas commented on Intel’s decline, stating that the company was “punished” for missing mobile and for not investing in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography at the same rate as TSMC, which he said made it “very difficult to catch up.” He also expressed optimism about U.S.-China collaboration on AI, saying that based on conversations he has had, China’s “minds are in the right space” regarding safety and guardrails, and that countries with capabilities need to “sit at the table to have the conversations.” In mid-2026, Haas discussed SoftBank’s plans to develop a large-scale AI data center, describing the company as “uniquely positioned to win” due to its assets in AI, robotics, energy, and compute. He argued that the demand for compute is not a sign of a glut, noting that “everyone needs more and more compute.” At COMPUTEX 2026 in Taipei, Haas highlighted the growth of agentic AI, stating that Arm believes “four times the number of CPU cores” will be needed in the same power envelope going forward. He also cited Google’s decision to move the head node of its TPU systems from x86 to Arm-based Axion chips, claiming a “60% less power at the same performance” benefit. Haas emphasized Arm’s reliance on Taiwan’s ecosystem, saying, “Without Taiwan there really is no ARM.”
Transcript (25 segments)
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Interviewer0:00
Signal AI compute, what or something entirely different? Joining me now in a Fox Business exclusive live from the New York Stock Exchange, the role of chip design and chip maker recently named CEO of SoftBank International, as if you didn't already have so much to do.
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Rene Haas0:20
A fun time to be in this business, for sure.
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Interviewer0:25
Let's talk about this business. SoftBank announced, tell us what it would be. Is it a sign there is a compute glut, so much so that they can fill it out and rent some of that?
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Rene Haas0:38
I don't think so. Continuation of a statement last week at the annual meeting from the head of SoftBank. You look at the ecosystem: OpenAI, robotics, infrastructure, SoftBank Energy, ARM compute. SoftBank has a lot of assets in the company and a group to get into this business. So the announcement, the telecom carrier joined with the parent company offering Neo Cloud services, is uniquely positioned to win in this game where the scale is getting large. Gigawatts, as you said, half a trillion dollars investment. Not many companies can do that.
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Interviewer1:23
Let's not toss that away. SoftBank is in the process of building half a trillion dollars. They will spend on this. Tell us how that is going. And can I ask, will some of that be operated out of Ohio?
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Rene Haas1:43
Today we are not talking about it being involved, but it's a group product, meaning that Energy is involved, SoftBank Group. But most importantly, a gigantic project in Ohio where our generation up to ten gigawatts is being funded by the Japanese government with SoftBank. A gigantic project, great for the state of Ohio in the United States, and a huge level of continuing.
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Interviewer2:11
Is there a way to get ahead of the not-in-my-backyard crowd or the BANANA crowd, build nothing anywhere near anything?
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Rene Haas2:21
It's an old site for nuclear power, so regentrification of the site involved in this area before.
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Interviewer2:29
Cold or enrichment center.
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Rene Haas2:32
That's right. It created a lot of jobs: over 30,000 construction jobs and 4,000 permanent jobs. This belief that data centers don't create long-term opportunities, fully loaded about 4,000 real or come jobs.
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Interviewer2:50
After the report came out yesterday that Meta would sell excess compute, I didn't think they had enough compute and that's why they are starting deals right and left. But now they say they will get that out and settle some of that, or at least rent it. An analyst called the first hyperscaler to admit to a compute glut and said it signals AI infrastructure bubble may be bursting. What's your response?
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Rene Haas3:23
I will share that opinion. If you look at the deal basics did with Anthropic, it's basically Elon Musk doing his own compute, providing compute for someone doing frontier methods. I do the Meta deal is similar. A lot of demand for compute and not everything can be served by smaller players. And when you talk about the investment required for gigawatt scale, these are companies with muscle: SpaceX, Meta, and SoftBank, which is why we are doing it.
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Interviewer3:54
You wear your ARM hat. He will report earnings when? You can't talk specifics, but you made the announcement like you are manufacturing CPU chips and you have a deal. What about the competitive aspects of SoftBank, which is your largest shareholder, trying to do Neo Cloud business and Meta?
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Rene Haas4:23
The Venn diagram of the intersection of the companies and providers in financing capital, it's a complex world. Everyone needs more and more compute. Since we made the announcement, CPU is hot again, and it's because of generative AI. Agents require CPU, the scheduling and heavy lifting to move the tokens and rated by the GPU, so it is real and the timing evidenced that.
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Interviewer4:56
They call it circular and it hints that there are too many connections within a tight group: NVIDIA, OpenAI, SoftBank. 13% shares in OpenAI. SoftBank recently tried to get banks to take out a loan. They wanted to take out a loan using OpenAI shares and banks lowered what they wanted to do and still said no, and now talks have restarted with like a $10 million loan. Does anything make you a little cautious?
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Rene Haas5:42
I'm a bit of an optimist, primarily because we see the scale of investment required is so large that it requires innovative models and partners and things we have not seen before. So they look at this and say this is weird, circular revenue, but I view it as creativity matters.
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Interviewer6:01
Standby because we are about to hear what is going on with the New York Stock Exchange. 3:33 p.m. and 33 seconds. They have traditions here on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and will start whooping and hollering because we are heading into a three-day weekend, so standby for that. I want to ask about robotics. Outright for five billion dollars and your chief has come out and said the robotics business has grown to be the biggest in the world. That's a pretty bold statement.
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Rene Haas6:45
I think it's for the robot we are about to hear. [Laughter] In terms of what robots can enable, there's probably over 100 different configurations. Hands, arms, flames, humanoids. The kind of work they can do will not only supplant what humans can do, but in some cases, work that humans can do. Data centers have such high voltages that it takes a special electrician to work with them, get electrocuted, so the growth will be a mess.
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Interviewer7:18
I like that.
If they don't put robots in the line of harm.
Before we go, memory shortage. We were told they will go through 2026 and now 2027. How is it affecting anything you do?
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Rene Haas7:38
It's a most question, there's an impact. One of our great partners works closely with Micron. It will have an impact for everyone, whether it's consumer devices to data centers. Modern devices need memory, and AI is real hot for memory. When you think about context and remembering conversations, people like to use the tools because it remembers what I did, that's all memory. It's main storage and everything, so it's a very real issue and I think we will feel it the next couple of years. We've had memory shortage before, but this one is very real.
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Interviewer8:18
America 250. A lot of people don't know your back story and where your folks came from and the American dream you are living right now as the CEO of one of the biggest companies in America.
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Rene Haas8:31
I'm like many Americans, first generation immigrant. My father was born in Germany and grew up in Portugal, and my mother was Portuguese. They came to the U.S. before I was born and they became U.S. citizens not too far after they arrived here. It took about 30 years and they would be very proud.
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Interviewer8:52
They should be proud of you and America. Thanks.