It’s been quite the decade for IPOs, with some of the biggest companies in the world going public in the last 10 years. Facebook, the social network you can’t escape, hit the markets in 2012, while a newly bailed out GM (GM) went public in 2010. And, of course, the tech unicorns of the last few years including Uber (UBER), Snap (SNAP), and Dropbox (DBX) also went public.
Of course, some companies’ IPOs raised so much money they were in a class all their own.
These are the biggest IPOs of the last decade as compiled by Renaissance Capital. Each company ranking is based on the amount of capital raised when they came to market.
5) Facebook — $16 billion
It’s been an incredible 10 years for Facebook (FB). The company went from startup to global behemoth in seemingly no time. Debuting at $38 a share in May 2012, Facebook’s stock got off to an inauspicious start, falling well below its IPO price to a low of $18.03 in August 2012. It took a full year for the stock to climb back to its list price in July 2013 — but it hasn’t looked back since.
In the intervening years, the company has faced a number of controversies including the Cambridge Analytica scandal and, more recently, has been targeted by U.S. lawmakers and regulators for potential antitrust violations. And while Cambridge Analytica hurt its stock price at the time, the company’s shares are still hovering around their previous all-time closing price of $209.94, and its market cap currently sits at $586 billion.
4) AIA — $17.9 billion
A ghost of the Great Recession, pan-Asian insurance company AIA was once a part of insurance giant AIG. But after the government moved to bail out the firm to the tune of $182 billion in the midst of the financial crisis, AIG (AIG) needed a means to pay back Uncle Sam.
To do that, AIG cut loose two-thirds of its stake in AIA, which subsequently went public on the Hong Kong stock exchange in October 2010. Shares were offered at a list price of $2.53 per share, raising $17.9 billion, which AIG used to pay down its government debt.
The company sold the last of its shares in AIA in December 2012, and it’s now the largest publicly traded life insurance group in Asia. It currently has a market cap of $125.6 billion, with its stock trading at $10.28 as or Dec. 19.
3) SoftBank Corp. — $21.3 billion
SoftBank Corp. is the Japanese domestic carrier unit of Masayoshi Son’s massive SoftBank Corp Group.The same group also consists of the SoftBank Vision Fund, which is behind investments in everything from Uber (UBER) and T-Mobile (TMUS) to the ill-fated WeWork.
SoftBank Corp. went public in 2018 and was immediately the largest IPO in Japanese history, and one of the largest in the world. With a list price of $13 a share, the company raised a whopping $21.3 billion, which went into various technology investments. SoftBank Corp.’s current market valuation tops out at $62.24 billion and traded at $13.14 a share as of Dec. 19.
2) Alibaba — $21.8 billion
Alibaba (BABA), was the reigning king of the IPO game when it went public in September 2014 at $68 per share, pushing just past SoftBank Corp. The company consists of the core Alibaba e-commerce site, its cloud platform, and its various media holdings.
Co-founder, chairman, and part-time Michael Jackson impersonator, Jack Ma stepped down from the firm in September, and was replaced by CEO Daniel Zhang. The company is trading at roughly $210 per share with a market cap of $566 billion.
1) Saudi Aramco — $25.6 billion
Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, officially launched the largest IPO in history when it went public just this month. The company, which listed on Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul stock exchange, was priced at $8.53 per share, and easily blew past Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company at $1.88 trillion.
But there are concerns about the company including potential security issues in the region, as well as the fact that the disclosures associated with the Tadawul aren’t as strict as those for other public exchanges.
Still by raising $25.6 billion, Saudi Aramco’s IPO was the biggest of the decade, and all of history.
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