Arm targeting $60 billion-plus valuation in September flotation -- Bloomberg

Investing.com -- Softbank-owned British chip designer Arm is targeting an initial public offering at a valuation of between $60 billion to $70B as soon as September, according to a Bloomberg News report citing unnamed sources.

A person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the roadshow will kick off during the first week of September and the IPO pricing will come the following week.

Arm executives may be shooting for a valuation as high as $80B, Bloomberg reported, although it remains uncertain if this goal is possible.

Reuters reported earlier this year that Arm is looking to raise between $8B to $10B from the floatation.

Arm's possible valuation target comes as hype grows around artificial intelligence and, by extension, the equipment needed to power the nascent technology. Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas, who took over at the helm of the Cambridge, U.K.-based semiconductor group last year, is aiming to expand the scope of the company's operations beyond smartphones into more advanced -- and lucrative -- applications such as artificial intelligence and data centers for cloud computing.

A ubiquitous, if obscure, presence in the global smartphone market, Arm sells the blueprints for the processors manufactured by semiconductor firms like Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ: AMD). It also licenses instruction sets, a type of technology that helps facilitate communication between software and these chips.

Softbank founder Masayoshi Son has touted Arm's potential to be a dominant player in the chip IP market since the tech investment giant bought the business for $32B in 2016. Son has said he would like Arm's public listing to be "the largest [...] in semiconductor history."

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