Uber

Uber Technologies, Inc. operates a global platform that matches riders with drivers, consumers with restaurants and grocers through Uber Eats, and shippers with carriers through Uber Freight. Garrett Camp, a co-founder of StumbleUpon, conceived the service in 2009 and brought in Travis Kalanick as an adviser. The company was incorporated in Delaware as Ubercab, Inc. in July 2010 and renamed Uber Technologies in February 2011. It is headquartered in San Francisco. Kalanick became chief executive in December 2010 and resigned in 2017 under investor pressure; Dara Khosrowshahi, formerly chief executive of Expedia Group, replaced him in August 2017.

First Round Capital was the first institutional investor, leading the 2010 seed round when the company was still called UberCab, and Lowercase Capital was also an early backer. Benchmark, through general partner Bill Gurley, led a round of about $11 million in February 2011. Later investors recorded in the IPO prospectus include entities affiliated with Alphabet, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, whose managing director Yasir Al-Rumayyan joined the board in June 2016, and TPG, whose partner David Trujillo joined in June 2017. SoftBank completed a large investment in January 2018, and Benchmark's lawsuit against Kalanick was dismissed as a condition of that deal. Before the IPO, SoftBank's SB Cayman 2 held 16.3% of shares, Benchmark entities 11.0%, Camp's Expa entities 6.0%, the Public Investment Fund 5.3% and Alphabet entities 5.2%.

Uber priced its initial public offering on May 9, 2019 at $45 per share and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker UBER. It sold 180 million shares for $8.1 billion in gross proceeds, and PayPal agreed to buy 11.1 million shares in a concurrent private placement at the IPO price. Revenue was $11.27 billion in 2018. Since listing, Uber has acquired Careem for $3.1 billion and Postmates for $2.65 billion, and sold its self-driving unit to Aurora Innovation. Its annual report filed in February 2026 shows revenue of $52.0 billion for 2025, up from $44.0 billion in 2024. It reports more than 200 million monthly active users across about 70 countries.

Uber shows how early ride-hailing backers captured most of the multiple. According to The Wall Street Journal, as cited in First Round's history, the firm invested about $1.6 million across Uber's first two rounds, a position worth about $2.5 billion at the 2019 IPO, roughly nine years after its seed check. Benchmark's 2011 stake was valued at about $7 billion at the IPO. Later capital from SoftBank, the Public Investment Fund and Alphabet came in at far higher prices and funded global expansion, illustrating how late-stage private rounds of the 2010s substituted for public markets until the company listed.