Alibaba Group, the king of e-commerce in China, is dangling a deal that could turn into one of the biggest IPOs in history. In a long-awaited move Tuesday, Alibaba filed for an initial public offering of stock in the U.S. that could surpass the $16 billion that Facebook and its early investors raised in the social networking company’s IPO two years ago. Alibaba’s paperwork says it will raise at least $1 billion, but finance professionals believe that is a notional figure to get the IPO process rolling and say that the Chinese company’s ambitions for the share sale are much richer. “This is going to be the granddaddy of all IPOs,” predicted Sam Hamedah, CEO of PrivCo, which researches privately held corporations. Although it’s not well-known in the United States, Alibaba is an e-commerce powerhouse that makes more money than Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. combined.