Who wins in an Uber IPO?
According to reportsfrom Wall Street, the ride sharing outfit is aiming to go public in early 2019. An IPO is long overdue for the decade-oldcompany thathas engaged in brawls with regulators around the world, adopted questionable growth tactics, and provided an unending stream of drama for news media coverage. Investors have backed Uberthrough thick and thin, helping it transform from a Silicon Valley start-up to a pioneer at the forefront of revolutionizing public transportation.
According to Crunchbase, Uber has raised a total of $22.2 billion over 20 rounds. The latest one occurred as recently as August of this year, when it raised $500 million from Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) at a valuation of $71.2 billion. Now it may betime for those investments to pay off,as major investment firmshave valued Uber'sIPO at $120 billion.
Here are three of the biggest winners from an Uber IPO.
SoftBank Group Corp.
The Japanese venture fund became Uber’s biggest investor last December, when it snapped upa 15% stake in the company for a funding round of $7 billion. Softbank(SFTBY) invested $1.25 billion at a $70 billion valuation for Uber and picked up shares from earlier investors at a discounted $48 billion valuation. Softbank’s investments effectively halted a lawsuit filed by Benchmark Capital, Uber’s second-largest investor, against the company’s co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick. The fund has also invested in a number of other ride-sharing companies around the world, such as India’s Ola Cabs and China’s Didi Chuxing. In fact, some reports have anointed the company “the real king of ride sharing”.
Benchmark Capital
The Menlo Park-based venture firm has been an early investor in several blockbuster companies over the years, including Twitter(TWTR) and eBay(EBAY). Benchmark Capital was alsoan early investor in Uber and led a $11 million round in February 2011 when Benchmark General Partner Bill Gurley joined thestartup’s board of directors. The firm also became a vocal supporter of Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick in his battles with local governments. That was until last year, when Benchmark became an instrumental player in driving Kalanick out the company after he sought to change the structure of Uber'sboard of directors. A subsequent deal curtailed powers for both the venture fund as well as Kalanick. Last year’s Softbank deal also saw Benchmark's shareof Uber’s stock decline from 13% to 11%, but the firm still remains the company’s second-biggest shareholder.
Travis Kalanick
Among the most colorful of CEOs in recent times, Kalanick was the public face of Uber during its formative years. His hard-charging personality, confrontational style, and abrasive tactics became the company’s trademark and were responsible for its stratospheric growth in less than a decade. But the dark underside to that style became clearer in recent years as reports documented the company’s toxic culture and habit of playing loose with the rules. Kalanick himself overplayed his hand and in 2017 was booted out of the company he co-founded, but he still retains 7% of the company’s overall stock and is on its board of directors. That’s not a bad payout.
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Still, Kalanick remains a board member and will walk away with the biggest payday in the Uber IPO. Combined with his previous sales, real estate assets and investment in his new company, City Storage Systems, Forbes estimates Kalanick's net worth to be $5.4 billion.
Who were the biggest investors in Uber? ›
Largest shareholders include Vanguard Group Inc, BlackRock Inc., Fmr Llc, Morgan Stanley, State Street Corp, Public Investment Fund, Jpmorgan Chase & Co, VTSMX - Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Investor Shares, VFINX - Vanguard 500 Index Fund Investor Shares, and Capital Research Global Investors .
How much money did Gurley invest in Uber? ›
---- Bill Gurley is the longest serving partner at Benchmark. He's most notable for his $12 million investment into Uber in 2011 that became $7 BILLION when Uber IPO'ed in 2019.
Who are the richest Uber employees? ›
At least three of the company's early employees — former CEO Travis Kalanick, Ryan Graves, and Garrett Camp — are now billionaires.
What is the most successful IPO of all time? ›
List of the Biggest IPOs of All Time
- Saudi Aramco - $25.6 billion.
- Alibaba Group - $21.7 billion raise.
- Softbank Corp - $21.3 billion.
- NTT Mobile - $18.1 billion.
- Visa - $17.86 billion.
- AIA - $17.78 billion.
- EneL SpA - $16.45 billion.
- Facebook - $16.45 billion.
Why did Uber IPO fail? ›
Cuban implied that by waiting until nine years after its founding to hold an initial public offering, Uber missed a critical opportunity to stake a claim on the public market, and showed up to the party late still expecting to reap the rewards of high speed-to-market. As such, its IPO inevitably underperformed.
How much did Travis Kalanick invest in Uber? ›
In February 2011, Kalanick met with Bill Gurley, an investor from venture capital firm Benchmark, and secured an $11 million investment for 20 percent of Uber (then valued at $50 million) for its Series A round of funding. The company embarked on its Series B round in late 2011, raising an additional $32 million.
Who was the angel investor for Uber? ›
Calacanis is an angel investor in Robinhood, Wealthfront, Uber, Desktop Metal, Datastax, Thumbtack, Superhuman and Trello.
Who is the first investor of Uber? ›
WOODS: When Bill Gurley first invested in a new startup called Uber, he thought he had found a great CEO. Travis Kalanick was the kind of super ambitious tech leader that you needed to cut through municipal taxi regulations and grow the company exponentially.
Is Uber richer than Lyft? ›
Most notably, Uber had roughly nine times the revenue as Lyft ($9.3 billion versus $1.16 billion) and almost the same multiple on total assets ($35.95 billion versus $4.48 billion). Uber also had a positive number for net income ($219 million) which is more than we can say for Lyft (net loss of $12.1 million).
Ryan Graves (born 1983) is an American billionaire, a former CEO and member of the board of directors of Uber, and a current member of the board of directors of Charity: Water, Pachama, and Metromile. He is also the CEO of Saltwater, his family office.
What is the highest paid Uber? ›
Uber Driver Salary
| Annual Salary | Weekly Pay |
---|
Top Earners | $53,000 | $1,019 |
75th Percentile | $42,000 | $807 |
Average | $38,995 | $749 |
25th Percentile | $30,000 | $576 |
Was Uber profitable when it went public? ›
Before its highly anticipated IPO in 2019, investors valued Uber at as much as $120 billion. But after going public on May 9, 2019, it made history with the biggest first-day dollar loss in U.S. history. Since then, Uber has worked on becoming profitable, in part through the acquisition of other companies.
How much money did Benchmark make from Uber? ›
Benchmark Capital will end up selling about $900 million of its Uber stock to SoftBank and other buyers, or about 14.5 percent of the venture capital firm's holdings in the company, according to people familiar with the transaction.
How much did Chris Sacca invest in Uber? ›
Sacca paid $300,000 for 33.1 million shares in the Uber seed round and $400,000 for 5.5 million shares in the series A round. He invested another $1.75 million or so in the B round for the equivalent of about 5 million shares. He has not sold any of those shares.
How much did Google Ventures make on Uber? ›
Six years after making what at the time was its largest venture investment ever, Google's $258 million bet on Uber has multiplied by about 20-fold to be worth more than $5 billion. According to Uber's IPO prospectus filed on Thursday, Google parent Alphabet owns a 5.2 percent stake in the ride-sharing company.