Valuation Soars Over $60 Billion! ARM, which is about to go public, has become a hot cake in the AI boom.

As the time for ARM to land on Nasdaq is getting closer and closer, the AI boom has pushed up chip demand and the market's target valuation for ARM has climbed more than $60 billion. On August 2, Bloomberg quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that Softbank's chip design company ARM will conduct an initial public offering (IPO) as early as September, with a valuation of between US $60 billion and US $70 billion (about 430.8 billion to 502.6 billion yuan). The roadshow is scheduled to begin in the first week of September, with the IPO priced in the following week, according to people familiar with the matter. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, the ARM IPO is expected to be the world's largest IPO this year. People familiar with the matter said that ARM executives still hope that the valuation can reach $80 billion, but there is uncertainty about whether this goal can be achieved. It was previously reported that ARM was looking to raise up to $10 billion in the IPO. Wall Street investment banks had expected that due to macroeconomic and cyclical factors in the semiconductor industry as a whole, ARM's listing valuation would be in the range of $30 billion to $70 billion, with a median value of only $50 billion. below SoftBank's $60 billion valuation target proposed last year. Some analysts pointed out that since Rene Haas took over as CEO of Arm last year, the company has been trying to expand markets other than smart phones. Now the focus is on * * data center chips that can be used for cloud computing and artificial intelligence applications * *, and chips for this market are the most expensive and profitable in the industry. It is reported that Amazon cloud computing business (AWS) uses ARM-based chips. Bob O'donnell, president and principal analyst at TECHnalysis Research, a research group, said: "ARM has been playing a very important behind-the-scenes role for a long time, but not much is known about it. There is now a heightened awareness of what Arm is doing and the role it plays." ## ARM becomes SoftBank's "Last Hope"? British semiconductor company ARM is the world's leading chip architecture design company, which designs chip architectures for Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD, Apple, Samsung, Huawei and other companies, including Apple iPhone A series chips, Huawei Kirin series chips and so on. In 2016, Softbank bought ARM for US $33 billion and tried to sell it to Nvidia in 2021. Softbank has been planning to promote ARM's listing ever since. In the past year, as the value of its technology investment has been hit hard in the industry downturn, Softbank has suffered serious losses, but ARM's performance is still growing at a high speed and is regarded by the market as the next high-quality target that is expected to boost Softbank's performance after Alibaba. Amir Anvarzadeh, a strategist at research firm Asymmetric Advisors, said SoftBank invested in AI and missed companies such as OpenAI, but the increase in ARM's valuation "may really save SoftBank from its disastrous past investments". Wall Street News Mentioned Earlier, Macquarie analyst Paul Golding said in a recent report that Masayoshi Son's bet on ARM seems to be a" wise move " because Softbank's future and its share price "now depend entirely on ARM and Vision Funds (Vision Funds), with Vision 1 holding 25% of ARM's shares. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son said in February last year that he hoped ARM's listing would be the "largest" in the history of the semiconductor industry. Generally speaking, the introduction of a major investor before an IPO can boost market sentiment and attract more people to participate in the IPO. Wall Street has previously reported, Bloomberg reported that Intel is discussing investing in ARM's IPO. If the negotiation is successful, it also implies that the two companies will have a broader business cooperation. In addition to Intel, ARM is in talks with at least 10 companies, including Google parent Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, TSMC and Samsung Electronics. On July 12, the Financial Times quoted a number of people familiar with the matter as saying that ARM is negotiating to introduce as a major investor in its IPO. Currently, Nvidia is still negotiating with ARM on valuation issues. Nvidia hopes that ARM's valuation can be 35 billion to 40 billion US dollars, while ARM's expectation is close to 80 billion US dollars. Negotiations have not yet concluded and Nvidia may not invest.