Lyft has secured an additional investment of $500 million in another funding round led by CapitalG, the investment arm of Alphabet Inc. A recent share authorization document filed in Delaware on Tuesday indicates the ride-hailing company is seeking to raise more funding at a share price of $39.75, which is the same price tagged to its share during the $1 billion round announced last month led by CapitalG, putting the San Francisco, California-based firm’s valuation at $11 billion.
According to a new report by Axios, a representative from Lyft has clarified that the $500 million additional funding is not final yet, adding that infusing more money into the financing round will help to advance Lyft’s efforts to improve its services for passengers and drivers. The funding round in October was believed to be a strong indication that Lyft would be able to kick off nationwide operations in 2018 backed by funding from CapitalG. Now the additional funding from Alphabet’s investment arm is supposed to further increase the chance of Lyft to expand its business across the entire country next year. One of the businesses Lyft is likely to focus on include autonomous driving, as the company just recently received a go signal from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to conduct autonomous vehicle testing on public roads in that state. It’s worth pointing out that Lyft has collaborated closely with Waymo to develop its self-driving system for its fleet of vehicles. Other investors that previously injected funds into Lyft to help accelerate its self-driving efforts include General Motors, which earlier last year led a funding round that helped to raise $500 million for the ride-hailing company and put its valuation to $5.5 billion at that time.
The latest round of funding is expected to boost the ride-hailing service’s valuation to $11.5 billion, a slight increase from the valuation it gained from the previous round of financing last month. Prior to that round, Lyft’s market valuation was at $7.5 billion, which the company reached in April of this year following a funding round that helped the company to raise $500 million. However, Alphabet-owned Google has a stake in Lyft’s major rival Uber as well, though it seems likely that the Mountain View, California-based company also wants to diversify its portfolio even if it could mean investing in competing companies.