Alibaba officially filed plans to offer shares in the US.  Alibaba appears to be very profitable, but did not show the revenue for Alibaba’s main marketplaces, how much the company makes from advertising or who will serve as the company’s new directors after the IPO.

The IPO reflects the growing ambitions in China and abroad of Alibaba, which was founded in 1999 in the eastern city of Hangzhou by a former English teacher named Jack Ma. Alibaba’s first business was a site to connect Chinese suppliers with Western buyers.

The filing showed the company had 231 million active buyers in 2013. A total of $248 billion was spent on Alibaba’s three retail sites in China last year, roughly equivalent to the annual economic output of Finland.

The payment processing Alipay, however, isn’t owned directly by Alibaba, but is instead controlled by a company 46%-owned by Alibaba founder Mr. Ma, according to filings from April. That structure is controversial, since it puts ownership of a company crucial to Alibaba’s business outside of Alibaba’s direct control.

The filing also revealed details about Alibaba’s lesser-known business renting computing time to other companies. Alibaba said this cloud-computing unit recorded $90 million in revenue in the final nine months of 2013.

But the filing said nothing about other questions on the minds of investors, particularly the breakdown of revenue among Alibaba’s primary sites: Taobao, a sprawling marketplace with more than eight million sellers, and Tmall, a destination for Western brands like Apple Inc., Nike Inc.and Gap Inc.   Together, those sites account for roughly 80% of all Chinese online shopping transactions, which stood at 1.84 trillion yuan ($296 billion) last year, according to research firm iResearch.

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