Softbank-owned chip design company Arm set for years biggest IPO

British chip design company Arm, owned by Japanese investment giant SoftBank, has filed for an IPO listing with Nasdaq, which is touted as the year's biggest. Analysts expect Arm's IPO to be the biggest of 2023. Last month, Bernstein analysts assessed Arm's fair-market value to be about $40 billion, reports TechCrunch.

SoftBank recently acquired a 24.99 per cent stake in Arm, reportedly at a valuation of more than $64 billion. Arm has developed and licensed high-performance, low-cost, and energy-efficient central processing unit (CPU) products and related technology. The company has customers like Apple, Alphabet, Advanced Micro Devices, Qualcomm, and Mercedes-Benz.

Arm was supposed to be acquired by graphics chip giant Nvidia for $40 billion in 2020, but the deal was called off in February 2022, owing to “significant regulatory challenges preventing the consummation of the transaction”. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had sued to block Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of Arm from Softbank on antitrust grounds.
Arm is a core supplier of architecture technology to most semiconductor companies. Its Arm instruction set is at the core of nearly all mobile processors powering smartphones, including those made by Apple and Android devices that use Qualcomm chips.

The European Commission also opened an in-depth investigation to assess the acquisition of Arm by Nvidia. Arm is reportedly developing its own chip, aiming to showcase the capabilities of its designs and attract new customers.