Alibaba Group held the record for the largest IPO before Saudi Aramco, raising about $25 billion in 2014.
Alibaba began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on September 19, 2014. Its offering raised about $21.8 billion at first, and the underwriters later used an over-allotment option to bring the total to roughly $25 billion.
The company was founded by Jack Ma and began as an online business-to-business marketplace connecting Chinese manufacturers with buyers. It expanded into consumer shopping through Taobao and Tmall, online payments through affiliated services, cloud computing, logistics, and digital media.
Alibaba’s IPO is sometimes confused with Facebook’s 2012 offering or Visa’s 2008 offering. Those were also major technology or finance IPOs, but neither raised as much as Alibaba’s expanded 2014 deal. Saudi Aramco surpassed Alibaba’s record five years later.