On what date did Apple Inc. go public?

Apple Inc. went public on December 12, 1980. Its initial public offering sold 4.6 million shares at $22 each on the Nasdaq stock market.

The IPO raised more than $100 million, giving Apple substantial capital to expand after the success of the Apple II. It was the largest IPO since Ford Motor Company’s offering in 1956.

By the end of Apple’s first trading day, the share price had risen to $29 and the company’s market capitalization reached about $1.778 billion. The surge created roughly 300 millionaires, including co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

The other dates are notable Apple milestones, but not its IPO: the Macintosh launched in January 1984, the iPhone launched in June 2007, and Apple returned to public attention after Steve Jobs’s return in the late 1990s.