CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an event in 2011. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com 
After years of speculation and anticipation on Wall Street and across Silicon Valley, Facebook may file for its initial public offering as soon as Wednesday of next week, according to a report citing people familiar with the matter.
The social giant’s IPO could raise as much as $10 billion, with investment firms Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as the lead underwriters, according to The Wall Street Journal. This would put the company’s valuation at approximately $75 to $100 billion, the highest IPO of any technology company in Silicon Valley history.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Facebook’s IPO is one of the most highly anticipated filings in Silicon Valley, a topic nearing obsession for the tech press and venture capital community at large. The company has swelled since its founding only seven years ago, with a user base of over 800 million people worldwide. The expansion of the social network has only fueled anticipation for an IPO.
But CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has been in no rush to take his company public, continually rebuffing questions of when Facebook would finally make its Wall Street debut. The 27-year-old CEO has had a number of exit opportunities in the company’s history, with tech titans as large as Yahoo and Microsoft offering billions of dollars to acquire the social network. Zuckerberg, then years younger, famously turned down both, instead opting to continue to grow and improve his company while continuing to accept venture funding.
If the company were to go public next week, Zuckerberg and a host of other shareholders would become multi-billionaires overnight. A filing next week would bring Facebook’s Wall Street debut in the summer, the piece de resistance in a string of major tech 2011 IPOs, including Zynga, LinkedIn, and social deals web site Groupon.
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