The chief executive of vanishing-image service Snapchat Inc on Tuesday said the company has a plan for an initial public offering (IPO), but did not reveal when it might happen.
“We need to IPO; we have a plan to do that,” chief executive Evan Spiegel said on stage at a Code Conference in California when asked about the potential for such a move.
“An IPO is really important,” he added, according to a live blog of the technology conference.
Snapchat rejected a US$3 billion takeover offer from Facebook Inc in 2013.
Earlier this year, news reports surfaced that Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) committed to a US$200 million investment in Snapchat that valued the Los Angeles-based company at US$15 billion.
Spiegel made the remarks during a talk in which he agreed with the notion there is a tech industry bubble that would at some point burst, with low interest rates, easy money and risky investments calling for a “correction.”
Snapchat rocketed to popularity in the US, especially among teenagers, after the initial app was released in September 2011.
Snapchat late last year began letting users in the US send money to friends via “Snapcash” messages.
The new feature came from a first collaboration between Snapchat and Square Inc, a mobile payments company headed by Twitter Inc cofounder Jack Dorsey.
The service was added as Snapchat worked to boost the money-making capabilities of its app, which sees messages disappear shortly after being viewed.
Snapchat has become a popular way for users to share videos or images, with nearly 100 million people using it each day, Spiegel said.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
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