VALUE
Converts the string representation of a number to numeric form. If the supplied string is a valid date, time, or date-time, the corresponding date-time serial number is returned.
VALUE(Text)
Text: A string (in quotation marks), a number, or a reference to a cell containing one of those types, that contains the value to be converted.
If the Text argument is a string representing a date, time, currency or a numeric value with decimal and thousands separators, the string must comply with current locale settings.
=VALUE("1234") returns the numeric value 1234.
=VALUE("+1,234.567") returns 1234.567 (considering en-US locale). Note that the "+" sign could have been omitted.
=VALUE("$100") returns 100 (considering en-US locale). Note that the currency prefix must match the current locale settings.
=VALUE("50%") returns 0.5. Note that the character "%" causes the numeric part to be divided by 100.
=VALUE("07/30/2021") returns 44407 (considering en-US locale) which is the date-time sequence number corresponding to the specified date.
=VALUE("09:20:25") returns 0.389178240740741 which is the date-time sequence number corresponding to the specified time value.
Refer to the VALUE wiki page for more details about this function.