Car-hailing service Uber is seeking to raise between $1.5 and $2 billion in a new round of funding that would make the company worth an estimated $50 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A funding round that size would also make the San Francisco-based company the highest valued private startup of all time – as only Facebook broke the $50 billion valuation barrier when it was still a private company.
Uber could be worth more than $50 billion
The Wall Street Journal report says that talks are ongoing and that the valuation may in fact go even higher, which would make Uber’s growth quite astonishing. In February last year, the company was said to be worth around $18 billion, but in December 2014, the valuation reach $41 billion. In the six months since that round of funding, Uber may have added another $10 billion or more to its valuation.
Uber already has the record for the most-funded startup, having raised $5.9 billion over ten rounds of venture capital funding in the past six years, as the Silicon Valley investors clamour over themselves to get in on Uber’s growth, fuelled by an aggressive expansion strategy in hundreds of markets around the world.
The investors don’t seem overly concerned with the gap between the company’s valuation and its actual financials. The firm did about $400 million last year in revenue, which makes the $50 billion valuation more than 120 times the money it pulls in. Facebook’s $50 billion valuation was on the back of $2 billion in revenue.
It’s perhaps no surprise then that Uber had the spare cash to make a rumoured $3 billion bid for Nokia’s Here Maps.
SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal
Larry Banks is a keen follower of technology and finance. He has worked for a variety of online publications, writing about a diverse range of topics including mobile networks, patents, and Internet video delivery technologies.