According to sources who spoke to The New York Times, the ride-sharing juggernaut is planning to raise that much in another investment round that, if successful, would place Uber — which was most recently valued at over $50 billion — in a valuation range between $60 billion and $70 billion. NYT notes that the latest round of funding will be the eighth that Uber has sought in five years.
Although details on the latest one are currently scarce, unidentified sources told the NYT that a round has been confirmed and official conversations about it will begin in the next few weeks.
Comparing Uber’s current situation to one that Facebook once experienced — the latter company went public a year after its last big fundraising round — NYT shared that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick recently expressed no immediate desire to take that next step.
“We’re like eighth graders. We’re in junior high, and someone is telling us that we need to go to the prom, and it’s just a little early,” remarked Kalanick at The Wall Street Journal’s WSJDLive Conference on Tuesday (Oct. 20). “Let us get into high school before we start talking about these sorts of things.”
Rather than going public, Uber appears focused on using its significant amount of funds to build out endeavors such as the delivery services, UberEATS and UberRUSH, the multiple passenger-inclusive UberPOOL offering and international expansion in countries such as Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and — in particular — China, which Kalanick recently cited (via the NYT story) as currently being home to approximately 30 percent of all trips taken using Uber.
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