A CFO Role Unlike Any Other
By Inder M. Singh
Today is my first official day as CFO of Arm, and I am thrilled to be at the company I believe is the most transformative and disruptive technology leader in the world. Already in the initial conversations with my new colleagues, I am amazed by some of the Arm figures I’m hearing … and they go far beyond just the company’s balance sheet or revenues.
I’m referring to numbers such as more than 130 billion Arm-based chips shipped, or how Arm technology touches 70 percent of the world’s 7.7 billion people. Hearing these numbers only validated what I already knew – Arm is everywhere, impacting how we communicate, compute, drive, and connect with the world around us. In fact, I’ve long felt Arm represents the compass for the future of computing considering that our technology will be the foundation enabling the convergence of IoT and Artificial Intelligence with the 5G world.
Given all of this, it’s no surprise why we are such a key component in SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son’s 30-year vision. Masa has given us the flexibility to take a long-game investment approach, fueled by the guiding principle of securing and connecting a world of a trillion intelligent devices. It’s also why I believe Arm can be even more transformative and disruptive than it is today.
As CFO, my challenge is to help Arm execute against these bold plans by reinforcing a discipline of strategic investing, providing business insights, and accurately predicting the financial outcomes of our decisions … while leading our world-class finance team in providing the company’s core finance responsibilities. It’s these challenges, along with being CFO of the company at the heart of the world’s largest computing ecosystem, that make the role unlike any other in the technology industry.
Those are some of the obvious reasons why I jumped at the opportunity to lead Arm’s global finance organization. Now I will quickly touch on a couple of the less obvious, but still important reasons why I joined Arm.
First, growing up on four continents and speaking five languages, I can apply my international experience in leading Arm’s global finance organization. Further to that, having a large team in Cambridge gives me an opportunity to spend more time in the UK, which was home to the most enjoyable part of my educational experience as a student in a hill-top castle-like boarding school in the Midlands, and where I came to love the British culture even more.
Another reason is tied to a personal passion of mine – cybersecurity. In fact, over the last 15 years years, I have served in an advisory role on projects for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, providing them with insights on current and future technologies in the context of M&A. And in the conversations leading up to my decision to join Arm with my now boss, Arm CEO Simon Segars, it was clear he was also very passionate about security and trust. I walked away from those conversations knowing that under Simon’s leadership, security will always be a priority and never an afterthought across both Arm’s architecture and services.
Having worked in both engineering and finance, I have always sought opportunities to be part of transformative companies. Which brings me back to what I said earlier, Arm has an opportunity to be even more transformative and disruptive than it is today. As part of Arm’s leadership team, I can’t wait to help architect the future of securely connecting a world of a trillion Arm-based devices which will enable technologies like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and self-driving vehicles to deliver on the promise of improving and transforming our lives.
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