Ride-hailing company Lyft has raised a new $1 billion funding round, putting its post-money valuation at $11 billion total. The round was led by Alphabet’s CapitalG, its growth-focused investment fund, and CapitalG partner David Lawee will join Lyft’s board as part of the transaction.
Lyft shared the news in an official blog post, and noted that it has run over 500 million rides to date, and expanded its coverage in the U.S. to 95 percent of the population, which is up from just 54 percent at the start of 2017.
Lyft raised $600 million at a $7.5 billion valuation in April this year, with investment from new partners including Canada’s public employee pension fund. The company was reported to be raising a new $1 billion round, with Alphabet involved, back in September.
Alphabet’s GV early investment fund invested early in Uber, which makes this more interesting. But relations between Uber and Google’s parent company have likely soured in general now that Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving company is engaged in an ongoing legal battle with Uber over allegedly stolen trade secrets regarding LiDAR tech.
Lyft has a self-driving partnership in place with Waymo, too – the company announced the alliance back in May, around its open platform for autonomous vehicle technology.
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