Chipmaker Avago Technologies on Thursday made its Nasdaq debut, closing nearly 8 percent higher in trading.

Singapore-based Avago on Wednesday sold 43.2 million shares at $15 apiece, the high end of its $13-to-$15 proposed offering price, to raise $648 million in the company’s initial public offering.

Avago shares touched 12.7 percent higher in early Nasdaq trading before finishing up $1.18, or 7.9 percent, at $16.18 by market close.

The Avago IPO represents a hefty exit on the public markets from two of the largest private equity firms at a time when venture capital firms are struggling to take companies public.

Avago was formerly a division of Hewlett-Packard of Palo Alto, California, known as Agilent Technologies, a semiconductor test and measurement company the computing giant spun out in 1999 in a blockbuster IPO.

In 2005, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Silver Lake Partners acquired a controlling stake in Avago and took the chipmaker private.

KKR became widely known in the 1980s for its restructuring of former tobacco and packaged foods giant RJR-Nabisco. More recently, the private equity firm has become increasingly involved in technology investments. KKR participated in the $11 billion buyout of SunGard Data Systems in early 2005 as the buyout boom had just begun.

Silver Lake led the storied $20 billion acquisition of disk drive pioneer Seagate in 2000, a move that would take the Silicon Valley giant private.

Lead underwriters in the offering included Deutsche Bank Securities, Barclays Capital, Morgan Stanley, and Citi. Co-managers in the offering included Credit Suisse Securities, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Securities, UBS Securities, and KKR Capital Markets.