Parent company SoftBank is preparing for the IPO of subsidiary Arm. The British chip designer seems to want to sell its skin at a high price, literally.

The Financial Times writes that Arm Holding, licensee of the ARM chip architecture, has informed its customers that it wants to implement a new business model. Instead of calculating license fees based on the value of the chip, they would now be based on the value of the device. This could significantly increase license costs for customers. The chip designer did not want to confirm or deny the news to the American newspaper.

This change of course is less sudden than it seems. Arm is about to list on the New York Stock Exchange (rather than London). After the sale to Nvidia bounced off, the Japanese parent company SoftBank hopes to sell some shares.

The IPO, which was postponed last year, is expected to raise at least $8 billion. Maximizing the income from the sale of chip licenses should give the British subsidiary the best possible stock market position.

Arm’s new arrangement is not uncommon in the mobile phone market, since Nokia, Ericsson and Qualcomm also use a similar licensing model. Still, ARM customers, which include almost every major player in the smartphone industry, would resist the changes to the licenses. Arm remains in a legal battle with Qualcomm because Qualcomm would unlawfully use the licenses after acquiring Nuvia.