Intel Discusses Participation as 'Key Investor' in ARM's IPO Scheduled for This Year

Bloomberg, Citing Sources... "Still in Early Discussion Stage"

U.S. semiconductor manufacturer Intel is reportedly considering and discussing participating as an anchor investor in the British fabless (semiconductor design) company Arm, which plans to go public (IPO) within this year.

On the 12th (local time), Bloomberg News cited multiple sources reporting that Arm is having such discussions with several companies, including Intel.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

Arm aims to pursue an IPO on the Nasdaq within this year, targeting to raise up to $10 billion through it. Arm's IPO is regarded as the largest IPO of the year. Bloomberg previously reported that Arm's corporate valuation is expected to be between $30 billion and $70 billion.

Arm is an influential British semiconductor company with a 90% market share in the mobile application processor (AP) market used in smartphones, counting Samsung Electronics, Qualcomm, and Apple among its clients.

In 2016, Japan's SoftBank Group acquired Arm. Recently, SoftBank attempted to sell Arm to U.S. semiconductor company Nvidia, which is at the center of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, in 2020. However, the deal was ultimately canceled due to opposition from major national regulatory authorities and global semiconductor companies. Among the companies opposing Nvidia's acquisition of Arm was Intel.

Subsequently, SoftBank announced plans for Arm's IPO on the New York Stock Exchange and completed the confidential registration process for Nasdaq listing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last April.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

It is not yet confirmed whether Intel will actually become an investor in Arm. The discussions between the two companies are still in the early stages, and the talks could fall through before the IPO. It is also unclear how much Intel would invest and what the investment structure would be, Bloomberg added.

If Intel does participate as an anchor investor in Arm, cooperation between the two companies is expected to become even stronger.

Intel Foundry Services (IFS) announced last April that it had signed an agreement with ARM and fabless specialized companies to enable low-power computing system-on-chip (SoC) designs using Intel's 1.8-nanometer (nm; 1 nm is one-billionth of a meter) process. The two companies explained that they will collaborate for multiple years across a wide range of fields, starting with SoCs for mobile devices, then expanding to automotive, Internet of Things (IoT), data centers, aerospace industries, and government applications.

Intel aims to establish its position in the foundry market, which is currently led by Taiwan's TSMC and Samsung Electronics, through collaboration with Arm.

SoftBank, Arm's parent company, plans to decide on the timing, scale, and offering price of Arm's IPO while monitoring future stock market conditions. Recently, with growing market interest in AI, SoftBank's stock price on the Tokyo Stock Exchange has risen nearly 30% in the past month, reaching a yearly high on this day.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.