Everyone’s favorite formerly-mustachioed, hot pink ride-hailing platform snagged fresh late-stage cash in a new funding round, Axios reported late this morning.
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According to the report, Lyft raised $600 million in a funding round led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, a subsidiary of Fidelity Investments and a prior Lyft investor. According to the Wall Street Journal, Senator Investment Group LP, a hedge fund, was among the other participants in the round.
Axios reports that this funding round could grow to as much as $1 billion if the company is able to secure a strategic investor. Investors in prior rounds include General Motors, auto parts manufacturer Magna International, and Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing.
According to Crunchbase data, Lyft has raised over $4.91 billion in venture capital and private equity funding to date.
Lyft is reportedly valued at $15.1 billion post-money, up from $11.7 billion in its previous round. Lyft was valued at $7.5 billion in April 2017.
How does Lyft’s current $15.1 billion valuation stack up to the competitors? Its chief U.S. rival, Uber, was valued at $62 billion in a secondary market transaction this past May, according to Reuters. Didi Chuxing, the China-based ride-hailing service which—by way of strategic investments—has global reach, was valued at $52.7 billion in an investment round in April.
Lyft’s latest round continues a trend of transportation and autonomous vehicles companies raising big investment rounds. Here’s a selection:
- Grab raised $ 1 billion from Toyota in a corporate round which valued the Southeast Asian ride-hailing service at $9 billion.
- Manbang Group, an on-demand trucking startup from China, raised $1.9 billion in a private equity round co-led by SoftBank and China Reform Fund Management.
- JD Logistics, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, raised a $2.5 billion round in February. Participating investors included Sequoia Capital China and Tencent Holdings, among others.
- In May of this year, Cruise Automation, a developer of autonomous vehicle technology, raised $3.4 billion in a round co-led by SoftBank and General Motors. General Motors acquired Cruise Automation in May 2016 for $1 billion. Its SoftBank-led funding round valued the company at $9.3 billion, post-money.
Crunchbase News covered a selection of other autonomous vehicles deals in May.
Lyft raises a new round during a tumultuous time in the urban transportation sector. As car-based services like Lyft and Uber start to mature past reckless days of hyper-growth, a new crop of companies is flooding city streets with scooters. And investors are flooding those companies with money at, let’s call them “highly optimistic” valuations. And both Uber and Lyft have entered the bike-sharing game by way of M&A.
As both companies compete to render more of the transportation stack as a service, it’s unclear when these companies will be compelled to turn the corner and reap profits from their billions in investor capital.
Illustration: Li-Anne Dias
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![Illustration of a man sitting on a huge pile o' money. [Dom Guzman]](https://news.crunchbase.com/wp-content/uploads/Giant_Funding-300x168.jpg)
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