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Selling shares of stock to investors is a common way that companies attract capital that they can use to fund new projects and growth. An initial public offering, or IPO, is a company's first sale of stock to the public. When a company files for an IPO, it plans on selling stock to the public, which means the company goes from being privately owned to being publicly owned.
An initial public offering (IPO) is the process by which a private company becomes publicly traded on a stock exchange. Once a company is public, it is owned by the shareholders who purchase the company's stock when it is put on the market. For many investors, the only real exposure they have to the IPO process occurs a few weeks prior to the IPO, when media sources inform the public.