Here’s a hefty number for ya: $96 billion. That’s the valuation amount Facebook, the massive social network with a user base of over 900 million, is hoping to reach after its May 18 initial public offering.

“The filing starts the clock for Facebook’s executives to persuade investors ahead of a scheduled May 18 initial public offering that the social network deserves such a lofty price,” reports the Wall Street Journal.  “Eight-year-old Facebook would become the most valuable U.S. technology company at the time of an IPO, exceeding Google Inc.’s $23 billion valuation in 2004.”

As a matter of fact, if Facebook succeeds in raising the sum that it’s looking for, the net worth of Mark Zuckerberg’s stake alone is going to balloon to a figure that is much closer to what the search giant was worth back then – approximately $18.7 billion.

The valuation of Facebook itself will, in all likelihood, begin rivaling that of Amazon and HP overnight.  That’s in spite of the fact the social media behemoth is generating nowhere near the revenue its peers in the stock market have brought in for decades, which in turn is the root of all the bubble talk that’s been following Facebook’s IPO since last year.

While all the spotlights are turned on Facebook, other tech companies are planning their ridiculously optimistic IPOs. One of them is Evernote, the note-taking service that managed to reel in $70 million in funding from investors right before its earnings call.

Big data dashboard maker Splunk in turn held its public offering not too long ago, and even managed to live up to the hype – its stock soared by as much as 90 percent on April 19.