(Telecompaper) Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba has filed for an initial public offering of shares in the US. The IPO would raise an initial USD 1 billion, according to the estimated fees for the preliminary prospectus filed with the SEC. The exact amount of shares sold and at what price will be decided closer to the listing. The filing confirms that Alibaba is growing quickly, with revenues in the nine months to end-2013 rising to CNY 40.47 billion from CNY 25.84 billion a year earlier. Over the same period its net profit more than tripled, to CNY 17.53 billion. The company's three marketplaces, Taobao, Tmall and Juhuasuan, had 231 million active buyers and 8 million sellers last year, who generated CNY 1.542 trillion (USD 248 billion) in transactions. In addition, the company operates the wholesale site Alibaba.com and the consumer site AliExpress and provides cloud computing services. Alibaba's largest shareholders are Japan's Softbank with 34.4 percent of the shares, Yahoo! with 22.6 percent and founder Jack Ma with 8.9 percent.