Nearly 18 months after abandoning its $40 billion acquisition of Arm over regulatory hurdles, Nvidia might be coming back into the picture reportedly as a lead investor in the British chip designer's IPO.
Arm is expected to go public in New York as early as September, after deciding against a London IPO. The FT reports that Arm is in talks to bring in Nvidia as a long-term investor at the IPO stage, along with Intel and other partners.
However, Nvidia favors a share price that would put Arm's total value at between $35 billion and $40 billion while Arm wanted a share price that puts its valuation closer to $80 billion.
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is reportedly personally involved in trying to find ‘anchor’ investors for Arm. SoftBank, which majority owns Arm, is trying to sell down its stake so having ‘anchor’ investors would ensure demand to support Arm’s stock and reassure potential investors.
Nvidia is the most valuable chipmaker in the world and it licenses Arm designs for its Grace CPU line.
Nvidia’s involvement comes after it sought to acquire Arm, though its plans fell apart over antitrust concerns. Issues were raised over the potential anti-competitive impact of rivals’ access to Arm designs, which are used by Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung, among others.
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