Monsanto had bought 3.3 million shares in Ceres's E round last year at $6.50 per share following a $137m collaboration signed in 2002 applying genomics technologies to identify genes that provide improvements in corn, soybean and certain other row crops, according to its regulatory filing.

In March, Solazyme aimed to raise $100m but now said it would issue 11.5 million shares, including 1.5 million if demand is strong enough as a so-called greenshoe allotment, at between $15 and $17 each. At the top end of its pricing range, Solazyme would have an initial market capitalisation of $965m.

Fusion-io will issue 10.76 million shares with its owners selling 1.5 million at up to $15 each, before 1.85 million shares can be sold if demand is strong enough.

LinkedIn's shares closed at $94.25 each after the initial public offering of $45 per share and more than doubling its market capitalization to $8.9bn.

Separately, Intel and Clearwire, which is majority-owned by phone operator Sprint Nextel, had been victims of an insider trading trial by hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam.

Investment banks and shareholders Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Credit Suisse are underwriting Bats's initial public offering.

On Wednesday, Yahoo told the US regulator that Alibaba transferred its ownership of payments system Alipay to a new company controlled by Alibaba chief executive and co-founder Jack Ma.

Of the purchase price by Microsoft, $686m will repay Skype's debt leaving an equity value of $7.8bn, of which about $2.3bn will go to eBay.