After all, the icebreaker IPO we’ve been waiting for may not come from the US.

I’d give a LEG to see ARM break the IPO deadlock

British semiconductor giant ARM returns to the public markets after more than five years of private life. Even better, the company note announcing which was filed privately to go public, in other words, a draft F-1 list, said it can be listed in the United States.

Why get so excited? Well, the news means that ARM could be the national IPO you’ve been waiting for a long time. The US technology IPO market is currently dead in the water and it needs a champion to challenge the unknown, and if ARM’s offer works out well, it could encourage other companies to go public as well.

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We’ve covered this before, but to refresh your memory: After a busy 2020 and 2021, US tech companies in 2022 suddenly found themselves in a changing market that generally preferred lower valuations for public tech stocks. That resulted in an almost complete halt in new IPOs in the US from both domestic tech companies and international firms.

This perceived shortage of liquidity in public markets is one of the reasons why the start outputs value in recent years it has fallen so sharply. The lack of exits via IPOs, a historically critical pathway for founders, employees and investors to earn returns, meant that a large number of highly valued tech startups are caught between a Late-stage private equity market in decline and an indifferent, if not downright hostile, public market.

ARM could change all that and do it in style. Remember that we have anticipated ARM’s bid could raise up to $8 billion through its bid. In terms of priming the pump, that’s a lot of primer.

How much could ARM be worth in its listing? Reuters cite some sources expecting a valuation of more than $50 billion, or a little more than two OpenAI.

If that sounds high, keep in mind that last February, Nvidia canceled a $40 billion attempt to buy ARM. Sure, valuations were a bit higher in early 2022 than they are today, but does anyone think semiconductor chips have gotten less important since then?