Uber raises another $1 billion from investors

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By Larry Banks

Innovative taxi company Uber has expanded its most recent funding round by a cool $1 billion, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing Delaware Secretary of State documents.

Uber gets a cash injection

That figure means that Uber’s Series E found of funding now stands at $2.8 billion. In December last year, Uber announced the $1.2 billion Series E round, which was funded by New Enterprise Associates, Lone Pine Capital, Valiant Capital Partners, and Qatar Investment Authority.

Baidu, the Chinese search engine company also contributed $600 million to the Series E round in December. And last month, Uber raised a further $1.6 billion of convertible debt financing from Goldman Sachs, in a separate deal from the December round of fundraising.

Back in December, CEO Travis Kalanick said in a company blog post that the money would be used to create more than a million jobs and to “make significant investments, particularly in the Asia Pacific region”. Kalanick also said that his company, which had a fair few public relations disasters in 2014, would aim to be “smarter and more humble” moving forward.

Today, Uber is one of the most valuable private technology companies, standing at $41 billion post-money valuation. It has managed to raise over $4 billion since it was founded in 2009.

For more details about Uber’s funding, see Crunchbase.

Uber’s future

 

Uber has stated that it will boost its presence in Europe, and push strongly into the Asia-Pacific region. However, the company faces stiff opposition along the way, mainly from taxi and limousine companies in countries like Germany, Spain and others, and will need to spend heavily to market itself to win over the locals.

To succeed in China, Uber faces an uphill struggle to take on China’s two largest taxi services – Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache, which have just announced plans to merge giving more than 90% of the taxi-hailing market. In the US, Uber’s main competitor, Lfty, is also trying to raise at least $250 million in provate capital, with Alibaba Group of China said to be in the frame.

SOURCE: New York Times

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