IPO

American  

abbreviation

1. initial public offering: a company's first stock offering to the public.

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IPO British  

abbreviation

1. independent publicly owned company

2. stock exchange initial public offering

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IPO Cultural  

1. Abbreviation for i nitial p ublic o ffering; the first issuance of shares in itself by a public company.

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Etymology

Origin of IPO

First recorded in 1975–80

Example Sentences

Some employees want to use their IPO shares to fund their children’s education.

From Barron's • Jun. 13, 2026

But the SpaceX IPO will have serious knock-on impacts for real estate in Texas and elsewhere.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 13, 2026

The stakes are particularly high for employees of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which started trading Friday on the Nasdaq in what was the biggest IPO in history.

From Barron's • Jun. 13, 2026

The extra price jump on SpaceX shares after “the largest IPO in history is exactly the configuration where we’d expect the housing response to be on the high end,” Thibodeau said.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 13, 2026

The other, he said, are American investment banks and financial services companies, which often need to prepare glossy pamphlets with graphs to illustrate the benefits of an IPO or a proposed merger.

From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman