Pivotal Software Inc. a maker of software for building cloud computing applications, today revealed how much it plans to raise in its imminent initial public offering of shares: up to $592 million.

Majority-owned by Dell Technologies Inc., Pivotal said in a filing that it will offer 37 million shares at $14 to $16 a share, though recent IPOs have often seen companies hike the price just before the shares trade to the public.

The company didn’t provide timing of when that would happen, but customarily shares start trading the day following the pricing. Shareholder General Electric Co. is also selling about 3.9 million shares, about 20 percent of its stake in Pivotal. Other investors include Microsoft Corp. and Ford Motor Co.

At the midpoint of the pricing range, Pivotal would be valued at about $4.3 billion. That’s a considerable bump up from its last private valuation of $2.8 billion but under the $5 billion to $7 billion some observers at which pegged its pre-IPO valuation.

The move, which follows a March 23 filing of its intention to go public, is seen by many as a way for Dell to reduce massive debt incurred from its 2016 acquisition of EMC Corp. “This is about Dell continuing to de-lever so they can pay down the debt,” longtime analyst and SiliconANGLE Media Inc. co-Chief Executive Dave Vellante said recently.

The San Francisco-based company joins an accelerating number of technology companies testing the IPO waters. Dropbox Inc. went public March 23 in a $756 million offering that saw its shares rise 40 percent above a range that already had been raised in previous days. Last week Spotify Technologies AB took the plunge last week in an unusual offering of existing shares. Several enterprise software and cloud services companies are looking to go out as well, including Zuora Inc. later this week.

Pivotal remains unprofitable, losing $163 million in its last fiscal year ended Feb. 2, though that’s down from a $232 million net loss the year before. Gross margins rose from 44 to 55 percent in its last fiscal year. Revenue rose 22 percent, to $509.4 million.

Subscription revenue in particular has been strong, a positive sign since it’s more regular and predictable than traditional software and services. Subscription sales jumped 73 percent, to $259 million in the most recent fiscal year, according to the filing, as the number of subscription customers rose from 275 to 319.

How independent the company will be remains uncertain. According to the new filing, Dell and its subsidiaries such as VMware Inc. will own about 70 percent of Class B common stock and almost 96 percent of voting power after the offering.

The company was founded by Rob Mee (pictured) in 1989 as a software consultant. In 2012, it was acquired by storage giant EMC, which then spun it out. In 2015, Mee took over the CEO spot again, and when Dell bought EMC, the former became the majority owner in Pivotal, which is considered a leader in the amorphous segment of cloud computing called platform as a service.

Dell has been looking at ways to pay down its $50 billion in debt, including a potential plan to take VMware public, revealed in January.

The shares will trade under the ticker symbol PVTL.

Photo: Joi Ito/Flickr