Lyft has raised $600 million in a Series 1 financing round led by Fidelity Management & Research Company on Wednesday. This additional funding pushes the company’s valuation at $15.1 billion. Lyft has more than doubled their value in the past 14 months.
Lyft has spent the past 18 months launched in 100 new U.S. cities, expanded into Canada and has partnered with Magna, an automotive tech supplier, to develop self-driving car technology. With their latest growth, 231 million Americans, about 72% of the U.S. population, have access to Lyft’s services. Thanks to recent scandals and missteps by rival Uber, Lyft has increased their market share in the U.S. to 35%. However, Uber still has a valuation of $62 billion, which is four times as much as Lyft’s $15.1 billion valuation.
Because Lyft is expanding and increasing their offered services, they need more funding to scale up. Recent reports have stated that Lyft is in the process of acquiring Motivate, the company that runs New York’s CitiBike bike-sharing program. This deal could cost Lyft $250 million or more. Lyft is in a race to compete with Uber, which acquired Jump, a dockless electric bike-sharing company, earlier this year.
After this round of funding, Fidelity became one of Lyft’s largest investors with over $800 million invested. In total, Lyft has raised over $5.1 billion in venture capital and private equity funding since their inception. Previous investors include AllianceBernstein, Baillie Gifford, KKR, Janus CapitalG, Rakuten, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
