Saudi oil company Aramco has priced its initial public offering (IPO) on Thursday at 8.53 U.S. dollars per share, raising 25.6 billion U.S. dollars in biggest IPO ever, surpassing the 25 billion U.S. dollars raised by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2014.

At that level, Aramco has a market valuation of 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars, overtaking Apple as the world's most valuable listed firm.

The offering generated subscriptions of 106 billion U.S. dollars by institutional investors and together with the total demand from individual investors, Aramco's order book hit 119 billion U.S. dollars, the report highlighted.

The state-owned oil giant said it would retain the option of an even larger offering of a 3.45 billion share sale, worth 29.4 billion U.S. dollars.

According to Reuters, demand from institutional investors, including Saudi funds and companies, reached 106 billion U.S. dollars. Meanwhile retail investment's demand hit 12.6 billion U.S. dollars. 

Around 4.9 million Saudi retail investors bought shares in the oil giant, including 2.3 million aged between 31-45.

The pricing comes as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is gearing up to deepen oil supply cuts to support prices.

Saudi citizens were offered 0.5 percent of the company or about a third of the offering, an unprecedented retail offering compared with previous Saudi IPOs.

Aramco has planned a dividend of 75 billion U.S. dollars for 2020, more than five times larger than Apple's payout, which is already among the biggest of any S&P 500 company.

(With input from Xinhua and Reuters)

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