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 logjam.

British semiconductor giant ARM is returning to the public markets after more than five years of private life. Even better, the company’s memo reveals that it has announced its private filing for public disclosure — a draft F-1 listing, in other words — that it may be listed in the United States.

Why am I so excited about this? Well, the news is that ARM might be the dam-breaking local IPO we’ve been waiting for. The US tech IPO market is currently dead in the water and needs a champion to support the unknown, and if Arm’s offering does well, it could encourage other companies to go public as well.

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We’ve covered this before, but just to remind you: After a busy 2020 and 2021, US tech companies suddenly find themselves in a volatile market in 2022 that favors lower valuations for public tech stocks. This has resulted in a complete halt to new IPOs in the US from both domestic tech companies and international companies.

This lack of liquidity in the public markets is one of the reasons why startup exit prices have fallen sharply in recent years. The lack of an exit through IPOs, a historically important way for entrepreneurs, employees and investors to earn returns, means many valuable tech startups are on the brink, if not hostile, of a shrinking private capital market and apathy. public market.

An arm can change all that and do it in style. Recall that we expected Arm’s offering to be as high as $8 billion. In terms of priming the pump, this is pretty much a primer.

What value can ARM have in the list? Reuters cites some sources that estimate a few OpenAIs at more than $50 billion or more.

If that sounds high, remember that last February, Nvidia called off its $40 billion bid to buy Arm. Granted, valuations in early 2022 were a bit higher than today, but does anyone think semiconductor chips have become more important since then?