E-commerce giant Alibaba overthrows Facebook with IPO

Alibaba went public on Friday. It turned out to be the largest IPO in American history, knocking the Chinese internet company Facebook off the throne. The stock was already well on the rise after the first minutes.

The company certainly raised nearly $22 billion and possibly more. With that, Alibaba performed better than expected, as analysts expected the company to raise between 15 and 20 billion dollars. With the proceeds, the IPO of the Chinese e-commerce giant is the largest in the United States. In comparison, Facebook raised ‘only’ $16 billion in its IPO two years ago.

Alibaba is relatively unknown in the West, but it is one of the three largest internet companies in China. The company offers a place for buying and selling goods under its own name, but is also behind Tmall, a site where companies can sell their own products directly to consumers and where Nike, Disney and Apple are active. In addition, it operates a PayPal competitor and supports Tango, a WhatsApp alternative.

Last year, $250 billion was traded through Alibaba. That’s more than eBay and Amazon combined. Despite the fact that Alibaba has gone public in the United States, it wants to continue to expand especially in China. A large part of the Chinese have never ordered anything online or have never even been online.