ARM's oversubscribed IPO is a tech boat race

  • ARM’s IPO is already oversubscribed and has given the company a market value of around $50 billion.

  • Apple, Intel, Nvidia, Samsung and TSMC have all invested in the chip designer ahead of the IPO.

  • ARM’s chips power AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and many other cloud providers.

British chip designer and cloud infrastructure kingpin ARM, which is owned by Japanese giant SoftBank (OTCMKTS: SFTBY), is holding its initial public offering (IPO) this Thursday. 

ARM’s most current public filing points to a target share price of around $50. That would give the company a market value of roughly $50 billion and make Thursday’s float the largest technology IPO in quite some time, aiming to raise nearly $5 billion in the public offering.

Bloomberg reports that the offer is already wildly oversubscribed and bankers intend to stop taking orders by today. 

ARM is largely recognized as the silicon choice for hyperscalers. Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud, as well as many other cloud providers use ARM. Plus, the chip designer already has its claws deep in the mobile device and IoT markets.

ARM’s owner SoftBank has been helped in making the IPO a likely success through major investments in the company recently. Apple, Intel, Nvidia and Samsung have all invested in the firm prior to the public offering.

There has been much chitter-chatter over what the Intel investment in its major rival means. An analyst has already speculated the investment will mean that Intel will make ARM chips. Indeed, we already know that Intel will fabricate ARM silicon as the companies had signed a “multigenerational” agreement to manufacture ARM system-on-a-chip (SoC) using the latest process at Intel’s foundries in April 2023.

Silverlinings asked ARM about the investments, the company said it couldn’t answer any questions right now because it was in a quiet period.

Still, we have several questions in front of ARM that it said it will address, after the IPO has made a few Cambridge engineering dons and Tokyo tech salarymen significantly richer.