Facebook Expands IPO, Could Raise $16B

Facebook's behemoth of an IPO is getting even bigger. After raising its price range, the company has now decided to expand the size of the stock offering by 25% to 422 million shares, sources tell Reuters. The IPO could now raise as much as $16 billion—dwarfing Google's $2 billion IPO in 2004—and become the third-largest initial stock offering in American history, after Visa and General Motors. The stock goes public Friday.

The price hike helped raise other tech stock yesterday, although doubts remain about the company's long-term money-making potential—especially in light of GM's decision to stop running ads on the site. "This is much more a spectacle, a media event and a cultural moment than it is an IPO," says an analyst at GreenCrest Capital. "This is not a game of models and fundamentals at this point." (More NASDAQ stories.)