Snapchat quietly files for huge IPO, reports say

Snap, the company behind social media phenomenon Snapchat, has secretly filed for an initial public offering, multiple reports say.

According to Bloomberg, Snap will seek to raise as much as $4 billion an the IPO could value the company anywhere from $25 billion to $35 billion. The Wall Street Journal and Reuters are more conservative, saying the valuation range is $20 billion to $25 billion.

The IPO could happen as early as March 2017, Reuters claims. All outlets quote sources familiar with the matter.

While not as big as Alibaba's monster initial public offering in 2014, in which the company raised $21.8 billion, the IPO -- if it goes through as planned -- would still be one of the largest in recent U.S. history.

Snap, which calls itself a "camera company," has taken over the world with Snapchat, a simple multimedia messaging app that's especially beloved by teens and tweens. Launched in 2012, Snapchat today boasts more than 150 million daily active users.

After raising seed money from Lightspeed Ventures, the company raised nearly $3 billion in a series of increasingly massive funding rounds.

Snapchat's unique mix of photo/video sharing, ephemeral visual storytelling and (more recently) breaking news content has often been copied by competitors. In August this year, Facebook's Instagram launched Stories, pretty much a carbon copy of Snapchat's feature of the same name.

While capitalizing from its success so far and arming itself for a battle against Facebook is reason enough for an IPO, Snap could also use the cash infusion to fuel its expansion into hardware. The company recently launched Spectacles, a pair of camera-equipped sunglasses that let users easily take and share videos.