Zynga poised to raise up to $2B with IPO

Zynga, the social gaming giant behind hits like FarmVille, reportedly plans to raise as much as $2 billion in an initial public offering, and the company could file its registration documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as early as today.

Zynga, creator of social games including Farmville (pictured), could raise as much as $2 billion in an IPO.

CNBC reports Zynga is likely to follow the low-float model, in which companies sell only about 10 percent of their shares to the public--if so, the size of its IPO could indicate a valuation between $15 billion and $20 billion. Zynga declined to comment.

Zynga's social game portfolio--also highlighted by CityVille, Words With Friends and Mafia Wars--now attracts more than 250 million active users each month across the web and mobile platforms like iOS and Android. Some onlookers anticipate Zynga will become the biggest Internet IPO since Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), which raised $1.67 billion in Aug. 2004 for a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.

The Zynga IPO follows a recent flurry of public offerings, with some analysts expressing concerns that investors are rushing headlong into another dot-com era, making enormous bets on tech upstarts that have yet to show profitability. Pandora Media generated $234.9 million at a valuation of $2.6 billion in mid-June; last month, shares of professional networking platform LinkedIn doubled on their first day of trading, and days later, shares of Russian search firm Yandex jumped over 55 percent at opening.

For more:
- read this CNBC article

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