SoftBanK's Arm Holdings launches IPO roadshow to court T Rowe Price; aims for $52 billion valuation

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startups toward going public as its success would signal the return of investor appetite for technology companies. Several other big names including grocery delivery service Instacart Inc, marketing automation platform Klaviyo and footwear brand Birkenstock are expected to list their shares on U.S. exchanges in the coming weeks.

It will also be a milestone for SoftBank, as it taps several marquee technology names as investors to drum up support for the company whose designs power more than 99% of the world's smartphones. Reuters first reported on SoftBank's proposed price range for the IPO on Saturday. Sources also said it could possibly raise this range before the IPO prices, should investor demand prove strong.

Arm generates a big share of its revenue through royalty fees based on either the average selling price of the customer's Arm-based chip or a fixed fee per chip. For the year ended March 31, Arm's sales fell to $2.68 billion, hurt mainly by a slump in global smartphone shipments. Unlike most loss-making but high-growth tech companies that debut with lofty valuations but later plummet below list price, Arm is profitable.

This is expected to significantly reduce investor anxieties, analysts have said. Sara Russo, senior analyst at Bernstein, said it is early days for Arm to benefit from the boom in artificial intelligence but the space represents an area of potential growth for Arm. Analysts have said Arm can potentially ride on Nvidia's coattails, which has been the biggest beneficiary of the AI boom with the stock surging more than 230% year-to-date, as its chips must be coupled with energy-efficient central processing units (CPUs) - Arm's specialty.