UK-based Arm Joins Tech Companies Eyeing US Listings

U.K.-based chip designer Arm Holdings, following a failed acquisition by Nvidia, will likely publicly list on an American public exchange, CNBC reported Wednesday, marking another foreign company choosing to IPO in the United States.

Masayoshi Son, CEO of Arm owner SoftBank, told reporters that the chip company will likely list on the Nasdaq, which is heavily tech-focused.

Arm is one of the U.K.’s largest and most well-known tech companies. If it shuns the U.K. for its IPO, that would represent a major setback for Britian’s tech scene, which has seen some of its homegrown companies fizzle in their London Stock Exchange debuts recently. Arm was previously listed on exchanges in London and New York before SoftBank bought the company in 2016. 

If more of the U.K.’s largest homegrown tech companies choose New York over London, it would be a “major blow” to London’s ambitions and add to the pressure on the British government to accelerate reforms, Susannah Streeter, a senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, told Reuters.

Arm is among a growing number of foreign companies that have chosen to list on the major U.S. stock exchanges. According to Crunchbase data, at least 103 of the companies that listed on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange last year were not based in the U.S. That’s up from 63 foreign companies that listed on the exchanges in 2020, and 56 that did in 2019. 

Last year, half of the 10 largest VC-backed IPOs in the U.S. by deal size were foreign companies. Coupang (second largest, based in South Korea), Grab (fourth largest, based in Singapore), Didi (fifth largest, based in China), Nubank (sixth largest, based in Brazil), and ironSource (ninth largest, based in Israel) all went public last year, collectively raising billions of dollars.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Learn More