Morning Report: Alphabet Wants More Than A Quarter Of Uber’s Cash

Morning Report: Just how much of Uber’s cash does Alphabet’s Waymo want? And does that help explain why Uber is raising again?

The Waymo-Uber lawsuit has a potentially high price tag associated with it: $1.859 billion.

That figure, according to TechCrunch, is what Waymo is looking for over alleged misconduct in regards to trade secrets. However, as the publication notes, the asked-for number was initially far higher:

Last week, Uber’s legal team told Judge William Alsup that Waymo was seeking $2.6 billion for an allegedly stolen trade secret related to the company’s autonomous vehicle efforts. Over the weekend, Waymo filed a document with the court noting that the correct figure was actually  $1.859 billion.

Now that we have a clarified figure, we can stack it against another figure we know: how much cash Uber has on hand. Axios previously reported that Uber had $6.6 billion in cash at the end of the second quarter. That number was off $600 million from its bank account at the end of the first quarter.

$1.859 billion is 28 percent of $6.6 billion. But if Uber’s cash burn stayed flat — the company has shown progress in reducing its pace of loss, to be fair — the firm is wrapping the third quarter with a smaller $6 billion in cash, raising the potential legal impact to 31 percent of its liquid dosh.

That’s a lot closer to a third than it is a fourth.

The suit is far from over, so making assumptions about its impact is premature. But when you add the lawsuit’s potential damage to the company’s other troubles, like its London headache and a potentially reinvigorated war with Lyft in the U.S., Uber taking on more cash isn’t surprising.

Then again, how much of Softbank’s capital would actually go to the company?

From The Crunchbase Daily: 

IVP raises $1.5B for late-stage fund

• IVP, a late-stage-focused technology venture capital investor, announcedthat it has raised $1.5 billion for its sixteenth fund, the largest in the firm’s 37-year history. The Silicon Valley-based firm plans to invest in 35 to 40 companies with the new fund.

Are tech stocks flashing warnings for startups?

• The five most valuable technology stocks have had a long and very lucrative run. A recent markdown, however, has some worried about a bigger fall that could extend to private markets, Crunchbase News reports. Meanwhile, cloud stocks are still doing quite well, while post-IPO performance for newly public tech companies has been so-so.

Streaming giant iQiyi eyes US IPO

• Chinese video streaming giant iQiyi is eyeing a potential U.S. initial public offering that could value the company at between $8 billion and $10 billion, according to media reports. Baidu-owned iQiyi, sometimes called the Netflix of China, reportedly had over 480 million monthly users as of last year.

Indigo Ag raises $156 million

• Indigo Ag, which applies microbiome expertise to develop high-yield crop seeds, held a first close of $156 million for a Series D round backed by new and existing investors. The Boston-based startup has raised more than $300 million to date.