The 5-year-old ride-sharing app Uber is now worth over $50 billion, a valuation not reached by social media giant Facebook until that company was 7 years old. A new round of funding gives Uber Technologies Inc. nearly $51 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Uber has generated significantly more revenue than Facebook did in a similar amount of time — the ride-sharing company had over $400 million in revenue last year, while Facebook had generated only $2 billion in revenue when it reached the $50 billion valuation.
“Uber’s faster climb to $50 billion reflects its aggressive global expansion into more than 300 cities and growing popularity ferrying millions of riders daily,” reports WSJ.
Uber hopes to expand its ride-sharing service outside the U.S., sources told WSJ.
In its latest round of funding, Uber raised nearly $1 billion, putting the San Francisco company’s total funding at more than $5 billion. Uber told investors it planned to raise between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick has proven to be an adept fundraiser, creating strange bedfellows among corporate rivals such as Microsoft, Google Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos,” WSJ reported. The company is drawing investors from inside and outside the U.S. — Microsoft Corp. and Indian media conglomerate Bennett Coleman & Co., are among the companies that are funding Uber, sources said, although the companies failed to respond to WSJ for comment.
In a statement, an Uber spokesperson said: “We filed to authorize this new funding more than two months ago. The filing is available to the public. We aren’t commenting on additional speculation.”
