Snapchat parent company files for $3 billion IPO

VENICE (FOX 11 / CNS) - Venice-based Snap Inc., parent company of the wildly popular Snapchat social media app, filed federal paperwork Thursday to move forward with a $3 billion initial public offering that is anticipated to be one the largest for a technology company since Facebook.

"Our flagship product, Snapchat, is a camera application that was created to help people communicate through short videos and images,'' according to the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. ``We call each of those short videos or images a Snap. On average, 158 million people use Snapchat daily, and over 2.5 billion Snaps are created every day.''

The filing also touts the company's latest innovation, Spectacles, which are sunglasses that connect video directly with Snapchat.

According to the document, the company had revenue of $404.5 million in 2016, up from $58.7 million in 2015. But the company still recorded a loss of $514.6 million last year.

The company was co-founded by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, who created Snapchat in 2011 while attending Stanford University.

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