The Most Baller Tech IPOs in History

Twitter is set to go public in the next day or so, and it's about to make a lot of people a lot of money. The company is going to hit the New York Stock Exchange, and will be known at TWTR to all the Wall Streeters out there. This is the biggest tech IPO since Facebook went public in May 2012, and you have a chance to pick up some shares yourself if you're looking to invest (Twitter says its shares will be going for around $25 a piece), and who knows, it might pay off sometime in the future. In honor of the occasion, we've gathered the biggest and baddest tech IPOs that previously cashed in before Twitter takes its place among the best of them. Here are the Most Baller Tech IPOs in History.

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IPO: $63 million

Meg Whitman was brought on as eBay's president and CEO in March 1998, and she would lead the company to its IPO in September that year. The company's founder, Pierre Omidyar, and its first president, Jeffrey Skoll, became instant billionaires. Its IPO was priced at $18 a share, but skyrocketed to $53.50 after the first day of trading. They raised $63 million and got a market capitalization $1.88 billion.

IPO: $1.04 billion

Chinese online-games company Shanda Games launched onto the stock market scene in 2009, raising more than $1.04 billion on its opening day by selling 83.5 million shares, which were about 20 million more than was originally planned. It was the biggest IPO of the year, but soon after its shares fell from $12.50 to $10.80 the next day, and its overall debut on the Nasdaq was considered a flop as time went on.

IPO: $406 million

When the professional social network went public in May 2011, its shares rose more than 171 percent on the first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares for the first day closed at $94.25, which was 109 percent over the $45 it was going for during the IPO. The company raised $406 million.

IPO: $50 million

Qualcomm has no worries. They've been doing incredibly well since going public in 1991, six years after they were founded. When the company went public, an investor that had purchased 1,000 shares for $16,900 and reinvested all dividends would then have 37,784 shares which would be worth $1.6 million. Today, Qualcomm is worth 15,000 percent more than it was the day of its IPO.

IPO: $1.08 billion

You might not have heard of Infonet, but it provided managed data communications services for more than a thousand companies around the world. It raised more than $1.08 billion when it went public on December 15, 1999, but is no longer a standalone company today.

IPO: $1 billion

Zynga didn't have too good of a day when it went public in 2011. The company had priced its IPO at $10 a share, and they went as high as $11.50, but before the day ended, shares went down to $9.50, five percent below what they initially asked—but the company raised more than $1 billion. Zynga went on to layoff a ton of their workforce and are now trying to rebuild themselves.

IPO: $10.6 billion

AT&T Wireless went public in April 2000, just after the dot-com bubble started to burst. When trading began on the New York Stock Exchange, AT&T let out 360 million shares, going for $30.12. The day ended with shares going for $31.75, and the company raised $10.6 billion—which, at the time, was the largest IPO in American history. It held that title for another six years.

IPO: $700 million

Groupon specialized in saving you money, and the company made a lot of money when it went public. The company raised $700 million and became the largest tech IPO since Google raised $1.7 billion. It was then valued at $13 billion after they increased their shares35 million and pricing each at $20 a pop.

IPO: $1.67 billion

Google went public August 2004 amid concerns it was priced too high. The company lowered its price point to $85 a share, which led to it raising $1.67 billion, and many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo got some money from the IPO as well, because they owned about 2.7 million shares of Google.

IPO: $16 billion.

Facebook went public on May 18, 2012, and was packed with as much hype as it was money. Investment firms were hit with technical glitches on Nasdaq, and Bloomberg estimates that retail investors lost about approximately $830 million since the Facebook debut. Nasdaq offered $40 million to investment firms for the glithces that occured on the company's opening day. In the end, though, Facebook was able to raise $16 billion.