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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.
Initial public offering. IPO redirects here. For other uses, see IPO (disambiguation). Initial public offering (IPO) or stock market launch is a type of public offering in which shares of a company usually are sold to institutional investors that in turn, sell to the general public, on a securities exchange, for the first time.