Wall Street crooks a finger. So what does Arm have up its sleeve?
He told me interested parties were going through Acorn to get a slice of a new company called Advanced RISC Machines that was to be spun out.
The company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, having briefly been called Acorn RISC Machines, and was structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple, and VLSI Technology.
Hermann urged us to look out for them as the business found its way. He explained what Advanced RISC Machines did and when my head cleared he said the new kid on the block could prove to be the most significant technology company that Cambridge had ever seen.
It was some baby – and baby look at it now! Robin Saxby and the 12 ‘disciples’ in the original founding team nursed the infant – soon to become known simply as Arm – in a Cambridgeshire barn.
The business had its initial financial struggles, but as early as next week could take America’s tech-focused NASDAQ market by storm.
Predictions for the valuation vary wildly but Japanese parent business SoftBank is hoping for anything between $60 billion and $70bn – pretty much double what it paid for the then UK-quoted Cambridge company in 2016.
At the last recce more than 250 billion Arm-based chips were circulating the globe in a plethora of devices. Arm is unquestionably integral to the future of compute across a range of sectors.
This is no one-trick pony; Arm is a thoroughbred in a high-stakes race – a quality leader in many fields – and to dismiss the business as purely a player in the iPhones market is downright insulting. It will prove integral to every major growth area of compute. ‘The Future is Arm,’ it says – and the company is not kidding.
Way beyond IoT, Arm’s architecture will power any smart device requiring semiconductor input; the company will be huge in data centres plying power without the vicious carbon burn endemic in rival ‘solutions’; autonomous vehicles and, increasingly, any element of AI.
Arm processors are already used extensively in consumer electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, wearables and other mobile devices. They're also deployed in a wide range of sensors and internet of things devices.
As an influencer, Arm is helping to power UK government strategy on semiconductors by co-steering a new advisory panel in the space. It is additionally spearheading an innovative education alliance in the sector to ensure tens of billions of dollars of investment is optimised.
To its immense credit – in good days and not so hot – the company has consistently supported smaller companies in globally far-reaching social enterprises.
Arm has been busy recently building high-end engineering teams in the UK – principally in Cambridge and Bristol – and is the literal power behind many international technology thrones.
Giants of the sector like NVIDIA want a slice of the action. Even Intel – which once snubbed Arm’s collaborative reach-out wants to be in from the off when that bell rings on Wall Street. But watch out for a mega move by Amazon ahead of the action.
Tension, excitement, expectation – they go hand in hand at such moments as Arm‘s impending IPO in New York. Given its early alliances and its burgeoning role in mobile phones, the Big Apple isn’t a bad place to house the float.
The US tech market has been scratchy in recent times. But this should still be the biggest IPO in the US for at least two years and possibly the biggest of any UK-based tech company in history.
It seems ages ago – but was relatively recent – when NVIDIA bid $40bn for Arm only to be thwarted by competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic and being forced to bow out.
NVIDIA has thankfully stayed roughly within the confines of the tent, side by side with Arm aiming outwards and upwards. Even Intel seems to have stopped standing outside the canvas directing a questionable flow in through the flaps.
All the while Arm has pretty much re-engineered its own sectoral focus; yes there have been lay-offs in occasionally large numbers from time to time across the years. But under astute CEO Rene Haas, Arm has reinvented the persona of the business to the benefit of 6,500 staff worldwide – around 3,000 of them in the UK – to the economy and to the entire DeepTech ecosystem.
The spirit of invention is in the very DNA of both Arm and Cambridge. While the location of the IPO is significant financially, the UK should still be able to enjoy spin-off cash and kudos benefits as long as Arm decides to keep a base in Cambridge, hopefully continue to recruit and incessantly innovate.
