US-based ride hailing company Lyft has raised $247.7m in funding from investors including Kingdom Holding, the investment vehicle of Saudi Arabian Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
Kingdom Holding paid $104.9m for a 2.3% stake in Lyft, which has several corporate backers and is now valued at $4.92bn. Lyft is targeting $1bn in its latest funding round, according to documents filed in Delaware.
Lyft operates its app-based service across some 190 American cities, though it has pulled back from plans to expand internationally. Instead it has forged a partnership with foreign counterparts such as China-based Didi Kuaidi and India-based Ola.
The company had previously raised about $1.1bn in funding, $680m of which came in a May 2015 series E round featuring Didi Kuaidi, internet company Tencent, e-commerce groups Rakuten and Alibaba, and Icahn Enterprises, activist investor Carl Icahn’s investment vehicle, that valued it at $2.5bn.
Alibaba had already participated in a $250m round in April 2014 that included Coatue Management, Third Point Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Mayfield Fund. Other existing investors include K9 Ventures and Floodgate.