Ride-sharing services are preparing us for a driverless future.
- Open an App on your smart phone or watch and request a specific type of vehicle to drive to your selected GPS location.
- Within a few minutes, an automobile arrives and transports you to your destination.
- Payment is processed via transfer from your credit card to the ride-sharing company.
UBER has plans to own a fleet of 500,000 driverless Tesla Model S sedans by 2020. UBER CEO, Travis Kalanick confirmed his desire for 200,000 driverless Tesla’s on The Late Show with Steven Colbert (4:40 mark).
UBER FUNDING: $8.21bn Source
- 2 August 2009 | $200,000 Seed Funding: Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp
- 15 October 2010 | $1.25mn Angel Round: David Cohen, Mitchell Kapor, Lowercase Capital, Founder Collective, Cyan Banister, Babak Nivi, Alfred Lin, Scott Banister, Jason Calacanis, Mike Walsh, Naval Ravikant, Shawn Fanning, Oren Michels, Josh Spear, Jason Port
- 14 February 2011 | $11mn Series A: First Round, Lowercase Capital, Benchmark, Alfred Lin, Innovation Endeavors, Scott Banister
- 7 December 2011 | $37mn Series B: Tusk Ventures, Benchmark, Goldman Sachs, CrunchFund, Menlo Ventures, Jeff Bezos, Troy Carter, Summit Action Fund, Bobby Yazdani, Signatures Capital, Data Collective, Nihal Mehta
- 23 August 2013 | $258mn Series C: Uber, Google Ventures, TPG Growth, Benchmark
- 6 June 2014 | $1.2bn Series D: Fidelity Investments, Wellington Management, BlackRock, Summit Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Sherpa Capital
- 4 December 2014 | $1.2bn Series E: Qatar Investment Authority, Valiant Capital Partners, Lone Pine Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Sherpa Capital
- 16 December 2014 | $600mn Series E: Baidu
- 21 January 2015 | $1.6bn Debt Financing: Goldman Sachs
- 18 February 2015 | $1bn Series E: HDS Capital, Times Internet,
Foundation Capital, AITV (Accelerate IT Ventures)
- 19 August 2015 | $100mn Private Equity: Tata Opportunities Fund
- 7 September 2015 | $1.2bn Private Equity: Baidu