Israeli ride-hailing service Gett, which anticipates becoming profitable later this year, is planning an IPO on either the London Stock Exchange or in Israel
Context & Ripple Effects
This FT report sits between two funding events in Gett's arc: an $80M round led by existing investor VW in mid-2018 at ~$1.4B that already carried a profitability pledge, and a $200M debt-and-equity raise weeks after this story at a $1.5B valuation targeting an IPO by Q1 2020. Naming the London Stock Exchange or Israel as candidate venues is the liquidity answer to backers who had been funding the company's pivot toward B2B ride-hailing.
What makes the story worth tracking is how the plan resolved: no traditional listing ever happened. Gett instead went public via a SPAC merger at ~$1.1B in 2021 — below the $1.5B private mark set two years earlier — and was ultimately absorbed by Lyft in 2026 as part of that company's three-acquisition expansion year.
First-order effects
- The London Stock Exchange and Israel's market are effectively competing for a listing that would hand either venue a rare pure-play ride-hailing stock, while VW and other existing investors finally see a defined path to liquidity.
- Gett's own profitability timeline slips in plain view: the 'later this year' target replaces the Q1 deadline attached to the 2018 VW-led round, signaling the B2B model needed more runway than promised.
Second-order effects
- With the IPO not landing on schedule, private-market top-ups became the fallback — another $100M in 2020 brought total funding to $750M, extending the runway but stacking dilution onto earlier holders ahead of any exit.
- The eventual SPAC route at ~$1.1B repriced the company below its 2019 private valuation, a haircut that sets the reference point for every later bid — including Lyft's 2026 acquisition.
Third-order effects
- Gett's endgame — absorbed by Lyft as its third acquisition in a year — points to a structural pattern where sub-scale regional ride-hailing platforms exit through SPACs and M&A at compressed valuations rather than the public listings they originally planned.
- For corporate mobility buyers, consolidation around fewer owners (Lyft among them) concentrates B2B ground-transport booking into a smaller set of suppliers than the multi-vendor landscape Gett's independent listing would have preserved.
The trend: Ride-hailing platforms that missed their promised profitability windows increasingly exited via SPAC mergers and acquisitions at valuations below their private-market peaks, rather than the traditional IPOs they announced.