Uber Technologies is reportedly nearing an investment agreement with a group of investors, valuing its self-driving unit at $7.25bn.
Existing shareholders SoftBank and Toyota are expected to be joined by auto-parts supplier Denso in the deal, which will include a $1bn (£768,000) investment in return for minority stakes in the firm.
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SoftBank’s Vision Fund announced its $8bn investment in Uber in January 2018, becoming the ride-hailing firm’s largest shareholder with a 16% stake in the company. Toyota agreed its $500m investment deal in Uber’s autonomous vehicle project last August, which included a collaboration on technology for a fleet of cars.
Should the deal go through, it will provide Uber with a boost in the build-up to its upcoming Initial Public Offering (IPO). The San Francisco-based firm is expected to draw in $10bn investment from the IPO, securing a valuation in the region of $100bn.
The IPO will follow that of rivals Lyft, which raised more than $2bn following its launch on Nasdaq stock market last month. Following the interest shown on the company’s IPO roadshow, Lyft’s offering had become oversubscribed. As a result, its bankers decided to raise the target share price from $62-68 each to $72.
Uber has spent more than $1bn on autonomous vehicle technology, as competition between Alphabet (parent company of Google), General Motors and Tesla heats up. Last week, Uber revealed that it had collected data from millions of autonomous vehicle testing miles, completing “tens of thousands” of passenger trips through its fleet of 250 vehicles.
The company came under scrutiny early last year after one of its prototype Volvo SUVs struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona. As a result over 100 of the firm’s autonomous vehicle operators were laid off, while self-driving tests were halted across the US, before resuming in December.
Following an investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board found that the automatic emergency braking system had been disable by engineers, to “reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behaviour”.
