Facebook continued its journey to a stock-market debut by filing a $5 billion Initial Public Offering (IPO) Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ars Technica reported.

Expectations that Facebook will go public have lingered for years, and the company is seeking to raise $10 billion by the time it starts selling shares this spring.

In a letter buried deep within Facebook’s SEC filing, the company’s founder Mark Zuckerberg said the social network “was not originally created to be a company,” but that there was a “huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected.”

Facebook has about 845 million users and earned $1 billion in profits last year.