Video Game Platform Roblox to Make Wall Street Debut

Online gaming service Roblox. Lionel Bonaventure | AFP | Getty Images
Online gaming service Roblox. Lionel Bonaventure | AFP | Getty Images
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Video Game Platform Roblox to Make Wall Street Debut

Online gaming service Roblox. Lionel Bonaventure | AFP | Getty Images
Online gaming service Roblox. Lionel Bonaventure | AFP | Getty Images

Gaming platform Roblox -- which has skyrocketed in popularity among kids and teens during the coronavirus pandemic -- will make its Wall Street debut Wednesday as a direct listing.

The company's shares will be listed under the symbol RBLX on the New York Stock Exchange.

By opting to go public as a direct listing, like companies such as Spotify, Slack and Palantir have done, Roblox will not be able to issue new shares on the exchange and therefore will not raise capital.

Instead existing shareholders -- such as founders, employees and initial investors -- will be able to sell their portions on the market.

The company plans to sell nearly 199 million shares.

The NYSE set a reference price of $45 per share on Tuesday, though the real price will depend on demand.

Roblox was valued at $29.5 billion at a fundraising round in late January.

The platform allows users to create their own video games and gives them a share of related revenue.

It counted close to 33 million daily players in 2020, and revenue soared 82 percent to $924 million.

But the company is not currently profitable, due to the expenses it incurs on tech infrastructure, data protection and paying game developers.



New Nvidia AI Chips Face Issue with Overheating Servers, The Information Reports

The logo of NVIDIA as seen at its corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, California, in May of 2022. Courtesy NVIDIA/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
The logo of NVIDIA as seen at its corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, California, in May of 2022. Courtesy NVIDIA/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
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New Nvidia AI Chips Face Issue with Overheating Servers, The Information Reports

The logo of NVIDIA as seen at its corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, California, in May of 2022. Courtesy NVIDIA/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
The logo of NVIDIA as seen at its corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, California, in May of 2022. Courtesy NVIDIA/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

Nvidia's new Blackwell AI chips, which have already faced delays, have encountered problems with accompanying servers that overheat, causing some customers to worry they will not have enough time to get new data centers up and running, the Information reported on Sunday.
The Blackwell graphics processing units overheat when connected together in the customized server racks the company has designed, the report said, citing sources familiar with the issue, Reuters reported.
The AI chipmaker has asked its suppliers to change the design of the racks several times to resolve overheating problems, according to Nvidia employees who have been working on the issue, as well as customers and suppliers with knowledge of it, the report said without naming the suppliers.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
Nvidia unveiled Blackwell chips in March and had earlier said they would ship in the second quarter before encountering delays, potentially affecting customers such as Meta Platforms , Alphabet's Google and Microsoft.
Nvidia's Blackwell chip takes two squares of silicon the size of the company's previous offering and binds them into a single component that is 30 times speedier at tasks like providing responses from chatbots.