British chip designer Arm Ltd, backed by Softbank Group Corp, is in talks with potential strategic investors including Intel Corp to anchor what is expected to be one of the largest initial public offerings (IPOs) of the year, people familiar with the matter said.
Arm has held talks with other companies about participating in the IPO, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.
The talks are early and could still fall apart ahead of the listing, the people added.
Photo: Reuters
It is also unclear how much would be invested in Arm or what the structure would be.
Arm is looking to raise as much as US$10 billion in its listing in New York later this year, Bloomberg News previously reported.
Representatives for Intel and Arm declined to comment.
Bringing on an anchor investor in an IPO can help drum up interest and momentum, especially in a rough market for new listings. If the talks succeed, Intel would eventually be listed in Arm’s IPO prospectus ahead of the listing.
Anchor investors buying US$100 million to US$200 million worth of shares have been popular for semiconductor-related IPOs in the past few years. Growth equity firm General Atlantic invested about US$100 million in Intel-backed Mobileye Global Inc’s IPO last year, while Qualcomm Inc backed GlobalFoundries Inc’s listing in 2021.
A key part of Intel chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger’s push to return the company to the pinnacle of the semiconductor industry is a plan to open up its factories to other firms, even rivals. If he is to be successful in competing with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) in outsourced production, Intel would have to produce chips that contain Arm’s widely used technology.
The two have already announced a technical tie-up. Arm’s designs and industry-standard instruction set are used in everything from Broadcom Inc networking chips to Apple Inc processors in the iPhone and Macs to Qualcomm Inc’s ubiquitous chips for mobile phones.
By taking a position in Arm, whose technology has enabled direct competition for Intel’s processors, Gelsinger might be seeking to show his commitment to Arm and to embracing that openness. Throughout its more than 50-year history, Intel’s plants have almost exclusively worked on its own designs.
Softbank founder Masayoshi Son has said he hopes the Arm IPO can be the largest ever by a chip company.
Arm’s valuation still has not been set and the company could be valued anywhere from US$30 billion to US$70 billion, Bloomberg News previously reported.
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
Pegatron Corp (和碩), a key assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, on Thursday reported a 12.3 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for last quarter to NT$257.86 billion (US$8.44 billion), but it expects revenue to improve in the second half on traditional holiday demand. The fourth quarter is usually the peak season for its communications products, a company official said on condition of anonymity. As Apple released its new iPhone 17 series early last month, sales in the communications segment rose sequentially last month, the official said. Shipments to Apple have been stable and in line with earlier expectations, they said. Pegatron shipped 2.4 million notebook
RSS