SAN FRANCISCO — Shares of Splunk Inc. nearly doubled their value Thursday in an initial public offering that faced high expectations for the business intelligence software company.

Splunk shares rose 98 percent to $33.69 Thursday afternoon, shortly after they debuted.

San Francisco-based Splunk’s technology helps companies process massive amounts of business data, an emerging tech sector sometimes called “big data.”

In a sign of the strong reception its IPO was getting ahead of the debut, Splunk priced its 13.5 million-share offering at $17 a share for a stock that had been given a revised price range of $11 to $13.

JMP Securities initiated coverage of the stock at market perform before the IPO launched.

Splunk competes with the likes of Oracle Corp., BMC Corp. and EMC Corp. Its customers include such companies as Bank of America, Comcast, Salesforce.com and Zynga Inc.

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