ARM Holdings‘ Chinese division boss Allen Wu has gone rogue, declaring independence from its Cambridge-based parent company.

This comes following ARM China’s reveal of new chip designs built for use in artificial intelligence, unveiled at a conference in a bid to curry favour with Beijing.

ARM has been locked in a dispute with Mr. Wu for over year. The chip maker – considered to be one of the UK’s greatest tech success story’s – tried to sack Wu when the board voted seven to one in favour of his removal.

However, Wu has refused to leave. The Chinese boss having the impetus to do so as the founding British division of the company is not the major shareholder, having sold 51% to Chinese investors for $775m (£564m) in 2018.

As well as ‘declaring independence’ from ARM UK, the Chinese division has set up its own website, under the name Amou Technology, claiming that it plans to create “independent architecture… [as well as providing] a diversified, customised, intelligent computing platform that meets the needs of China’s industry”.

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Speaking about the breakaway, Dylan Patel, chief analyst at the blog Semianalysis, wrote: “ARM China held an event at which they formally declared their independence.

“They proclaimed that Amou Technology is China’s largest CPU IP supplier. It was born from ARM, but is an independently operated, Chinese-owned company.”

Up until now, ARM’s China division had mainly been used as a middle-man to supply the UK-developed products to the Chinese market. However, it was always clear in its intention to one day develop its own chips for sale to the local market.

A spokesman for ARM’s British headquarters said: “ARM continues to have a successful working relationship with the ARM China team,” adding “the structure and ownership of the joint venture remains unchanged since its inception in 2018”.

An industry source said the relaunch appeared to be “marketing for an independent future”.

This story is just the latest in what seems to be an unending cycle of negative press around ARM, with the Chinese breakaway following a long-running saga with Nvidia, the US graphics card titans, seeking to buy ARM in a deal worth $40 billion.