Chinese E-Commerce Giant Alibaba Files For $1 Billion U.S. IPO

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Image: Mashable

By Seth Fiegerman2014-05-06 20:52:53 UTC

Alibaba filed paperwork late Tuesday for a $1 billion public offering.

The value of the IPO is seen as a placeholder and is expected to increase significantly, making it one of the largest technology IPOs in history.

Alibaba was founded in 1999 by an eccentric former English teacher named Jack Ma and has since become China's largest ecommerce company. It mainly consists two big shopping websites: Taobao, which launched in 2003 to compete with eBay in China, and Taobao Mall (or Tmall), an online shopping marketplace.

The company generated $5.55 billion in revenue for the year ending March 31, according to the F-1 filing on Tuesday.

The company has invested in a range of businesses, including retail site ShopRunner, messaging app Tango and Weibo, China's version of Twitter, which also recently went public.

More to come...

Topics: AliBaba, Business, IPO