Yesterday, Capital G announced a $1B investment in Uber’s mustached nemesis, bringing Lyft’s valuation to $11B.
This huge investment, of course, comes as Uber and Google’s Waymo duke it out in a fierce intellectual property lawsuit — and as Softbank nears a major investment deal with the U.
So what now, it’s Alphabet vs. SoftBank?
Basically. While the Uber-SoftBank deal isn’t finalized, it is well on its way, including a potential multi-billion cash investment and buyout of existing shareholders, in exchange for as large as a 22% stake in the company.
This is on top of SoftBank’s plan to pile more money on top of their recent $93B investment in their “Vision Fund,” created in hopes of acquiring stakes in some of Silicon Valley’s sexiest companies.
In other words, they want to take over SV.
But let’s get back to Lyft
This large investment from Alphabet comes at the tail end of a huge year for them. They’ve significantly expanded their footprint to cover 95% of the US, and have already inked deals with companies like GM, Ford, Drive.ai, Google’s Waymo, and Nutonomy to begin testing their autonomous vehicles.
Between these two corporate giants, this is really shaping up to be a fierce battle between King Kong and Godzilla. You can decide which is which.