Telecommunications and internet group SoftBank has held discussions involving the acquisition of shares in US-based ride hailing service Uber from investors including venture capital firm Benchmark, Bloomberg has reported.
Benchmark, which led Uber’s $11m series A round in 2011 at a post-money valuation of just $60m, is one of several early investors in the discussions, according to people familiar with the matter, and SoftBank is only one of the prospective buyers.
Uber was valued at approximately $69bn as of February 2017, according to Equidate, an online trading platform for private stock, though it may have lost some value since then due to corporate scandals and the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick.
Founded in 2009, Uber has grown its on-demand ride service to cover more than 630 cities around the world, and has also launched a business travel service and a meal delivery service called Uber Eats. It made a $2.8bn net loss in 2016 from about $6.5bn in revenue.
The company has so far raised about $11.5bn in equity and debt financing, and reportedly has more than 500 investors in total. Its corporate shareholders include Alphabet, Microsoft, Axel Springer, Times Group and Tata & Sons.
Any share sale would need to be approved by Uber’s board of directors, and the issue is awkward, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg, as Kalanick was generally opposed to early investors divesting shares and was ousted by a shareholder revolt reportedly led by Benchmark.
Despite the talks, a person close to SoftBank told Bloomberg the firm has no plans to invest in Uber, though the Saudi Arabian state-owned Public Investment Fund, which is the largest investor in SoftBank’s $93bn Vision Fund, made a $3.5bn investment in Uber in June 2016.
However, SoftBank is already an investor in several ride hailing companies competing with Uber in international markets, which would in itself be a valid reason for not wanting to back the US-based company.