British chipmaker Arm files for an IPO in the U.S.

Yahoo Finance Live’s Brad Smith reports that SoftBank-owned chipmaker Arm has filed for an IPO in the U.S.

Video transcript

BRAD SMITH: And, everyone, switching gears here, British semiconductor manufacturer ARM is finally gearing up for an IPO. The chipmaker announced it submitted a draft registration on Saturday to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, known in your hood as the SEC. And they will reportedly seek to raise up to $10 billion according to Reuters.

The debut is closely watched here by SoftBank, which purchased the chipmaker for roughly $32 billion in 2016, and by a market seeing a slowdown in IPOs this year. A debut would make ARM one of the biggest offerings in the year so far here.

DIANE KING HALL: Yeah, definitely, people will be watching this one. We know deal activity in general-- or IPO activity rather, has been slower but faster than the previous year in general, with regard to the IPO market. So it'll be closely watched.

You know, this coming after they had said they plan to seek a public offering after NVIDIA backed away from doing a deal. They had wanted NVIDIA to purchase ARM. So now SoftBank going to the public market with this.

And IPOs, in general, closely watching because we haven't seen a leader yet with regard to that. You know, Kenvue is-- I mean, it's not your traditional IPO because it has the--

BRAD SMITH: Spinoff.

DIANE KING HALL: --J&J history. It's a spinoff. That one will be closely watched. Investors certainly looking for a blue chip IPO which will, you know, come to market. What would that be?

BRAD SMITH: And this is gonna be a big deal because there are not as many unicorns out there, as well, in the market. 2022 to kind of dried that up a little bit. But they're still about-- at the start of this year, at least 1,200-- a little over 1,200 unicorns, companies with a billion dollar valuations which are typically looked to go public because some of these companies are already household names. Some of them just looking to get an additional cash infusion in order to continue their operations and hit profitability, as well. So we'll see where some of those start to make their way into the public equity landscape, as well.