History of Uber Funding Rounds

One of the most important contributing factors to the immense growth of Uber could possibly be the healthy level of funding the company has gotten over the course of time. With such great ideas and execution paradigm, it is somewhat easy for investors to vest their confidence on the ability of the Uber team to justify whatever amount they get in funding.

Uber has tried as much as possible to live up to such great expectations for long and it is the only reason why the funding keeps coming. In this post we will simply discuss the levels of funding that Uber has been through and a few interesting statistics that we have on these dealings. Although we couldn’t gather full information, as Uber is not exactly the type of firm to put all the figures out there, yet we will attempt to make a good discussion out of the few available details.

SEED FUNDING AND THE FIRST ROUND

As we may already know, Uber started in 2009. When the company started, it had about $200,000 in seed funding, with the main investors being the founders, Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick. This money was used to kick start major business operation as at that time.

As the business grew, so did the funding which could represent the level of investor confidence in the potential of the business structure. So in October 2010, they got $1.25M from about 17 Angel investors led by First Round. The investors included Alfred Lin, Babak Nivi, Cyan Banister, Founder Collective, Jason Calacanics, Lowercase Capital, Techstars Ventures, amongst many others.

SERIES A -F FUNDING ROUNDS

In Feb 2011, Uber gathered $11M in a Series A funding round led by Benchmark alongside 5 other investors. Menlo Ventures then led the Series B funding in December that same year which amounted to about $32M – there were 11 investors in this round. It was then that things took a jump, the series C funding amounted to about $258M in August 2013 and that led to Uber becoming a billion-dollar company, valued at that time, at $3.5B. Then in 2014 alone, Uber got about $3.2B in their Series D and E funding. This period saw the valuation of the company rise as high as $40B.

In 2015, Uber raised $1.6B for Debt Financing, and Series E and F funding jointly estimated at about $2B. From then till February 2016,Uber has raised about $3.5B in private equity, with companies like Baidu and LetterOne being key investors in some of those rounds. These investments have not gone unjustified, as Uber has continued to create an undying space for itself in the rideshare market. Spread across over 400 cities in 60 countries of the world, Uber is the type of company that is making the best use of the funding it gets and making sure it creates the confidence that getting more investments require. Looking at the way Uber has operated over the years, one would see that most of the funding raised has been spent on promoting the business on a global scale and expanding it to various countries – which is succeeding.

In my view, the important thing to note is that yearly funding total for Uber has been increasing because the output and productivity of the firm is strictly unquestionable. As of now, the valuation of the company is put at about $60B. At this pace, Uber will quickly grow into an unstoppable force and more expansions would definitely be possible.

Primary Source: Crunchbase.com

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-by Ola John and Edited by Kunle Bowale.