Alibaba: The Road From a $60,000 Investment to a $21 Billion IPO

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is expected to go public on Friday. Bankers expect to price the company's shares between $66 and $68 a piece, which at the midpoint values Alibaba at about $165 billion. The Alibaba IPO is expected to raise at least $21 billion, which stands to make it the largest initial public offering in history. The road to Alibaba's IPO started back in December 1998 in a Hangzhou apartment, when the Internet marketplace was founded by entrepreneur Jack Ma and 17 other founders as a business-to-business trading platform. It began with a reported initial investment of $60,000.