Which company’s 2019 IPO was the largest public stock offering ever at the time?

Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO was the largest public stock offering ever at the time.

Saudi Aramco raised about $25.6 billion in its initial public offering in December 2019. The listing took place on Tadawul, Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange, and temporarily made the company the world’s most valuable publicly traded company by market capitalization.

The offering sold a small percentage of Saudi Aramco, while the Saudi government retained overwhelming ownership. The IPO was part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 economic program, which seeks to diversify the country’s economy beyond oil.

The record is sometimes confused with Alibaba’s 2014 offering, which was the largest IPO before Saudi Aramco. Alibaba raised $21.8 billion at its initial listing, with later additional shares bringing the total higher.