Amazon is in talks to join the ranks of cornerstone investors in other tech companies ahead of SoftBank Group Corp’s Arm arm IPO, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Amazon’s possible participation in the IPO, which has never been reported before, underscores Arm’s importance in cloud computing. Amazon Web Services, the internet giant’s cloud business, uses Arm’s design to produce its own processing chips, called Graviton.
Arm plans to list on Nasdaq in early September, according to a person familiar with the matter. According to Reuters, the company is seeking to raise between $8 billion and $10 billion (roughly Rs 662.52 crore to Rs 828.15 crore).
Arm and Amazon declined to comment.
According to Reuters, Arm has held talks with about 10 technology companies including Intel, Alphabet and Nvidia about pre-IPO investments. The investors will not get any board seats or control, the sources said.
Arm hopes the addition of cornerstone investors will strengthen its ties to top clients and make the IPO more attractive, one of the sources said.
The IPO is expected to be a much-needed boon for SoftBank, which is trying to turn around its sprawling Vision Fund after many bets on tech startups failed.
SoftBank has been working to take Arm public since its $40 billion (Rs 33,126 crore) sale of the chip designer to Nvidia last year failed amid opposition from U.S. and European antitrust regulators.
Since then, Arm has outperformed the broader chip industry as it focuses on data center servers and personal computers that generate higher royalties.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
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