Sources: Uber looking to raise close to $1B in new venture capital at valuation of $60B-$70B
Uber Said to Plan Another $1 Billion in Fund-Raising — Just three months after raising an enormous sum of money from investors, Uber is at it again. — The ride-hailing service is planning …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the third reported fundraising move in Uber's 2015 sequence: January brought a $1.6B convertible debt raise distributed through Goldman Sachs' clients, and May produced plans for a $1.5–2B equity round at $50B or higher. Now, three months after that spring raise, sources put Uber back in the market for close to $1B at a $60B–$70B mark — a step up from the $50B floor discussed mid-year.
First-order effects
- Existing shareholders face dilution as Uber layers a near-$1B venture round on top of a year that already mixed convertible debt and equity raises.
- Late-stage investors gain a fresh entry point into the most valuable US startup at a valuation band ($60B–$70B) above where Uber was pitching in May.
Second-order effects
- The December follow-through — a round of up to $2.1B at $62.5B bringing in Tiger Global and T. Rowe Price — signals that mutual funds and crossover firms, not just traditional VCs, are now supplying ride-hailing's growth capital, pulling private valuations into public-fund portfolios.
- Any rival ride-hailing operator must now compete against a competitor whose 2015 alone added multiple billions in committed capital, pressuring the whole sector onto the same fundraising treadmill.
Third-order effects
- By 2018 Uber was running a secondary round of up to $600M at a $62B valuation with more than $21B raised to date — essentially the same mark this round chased — suggesting the flood of late-stage capital bought growth but not valuation gains, a structural warning about pre-IPO marks set by successive private rounds.
The trend: Ride-hailing's growth is being financed by an accelerating cadence of multi-billion-dollar late-stage rounds, with mutual funds replacing venture capital as the marginal buyer and valuations flattening once the money stops moving the number.