LinkedIn Shares Soar in IPO

Shares of LinkedIn soared to more than double their offering price in the company’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday morning.

LinkedIn began trading around 10:00 a.m. ET under the symbol LNKD and quickly surged to above $90 per share. The company had priced its shares at $45 each on Wednesday ahead of the IPO, and the move significantly higher now values the company at more than $8 billion. (Update: As of 10:20 a.m. ET, shares had settled in the $80-$85 range.)

The huge pop also makes founder Reid Hoffman a billionaire — his stake had been valued at $855 million at the original offering price.

LinkedIn’s IPO is viewed by many as a barometer of the public market’s appetite for Internet and social media companies, with the likes of Facebook, Groupon, Pandora and Kayak expected to IPO within the next year. Certainly, today’s huge pop in LinkedIn shares sends a signal that the market is once again hungry (if not starving) for tech.