Over the weekend, Bloomberg reported that just three months after it stunned observers with a $2.8 billion Series E capital raise at a $40 billion valuation, surpassing the market cap of such "blue chip" names as Canon, Yum! Brands, Delta Air Lines, Prudential and Adobe (not to mention the market cap of the entire QQQ ETF), car hailing company Uber is seeking to raise another $1.5 billion, this time at a valuation round of $50 billion: a $10 billion increase in value in a few short months.
To put this in perspective, according to CapIq, there were just 95 companies in the S&P500 with a market cap over $50 billion, suggesting Uber which did not exist when Lehman filed for bankruptcy, now has a market capitalization greater than 80% of the S&P. Specifically, at a $50 billion valuation, Uber is more "valuable" than FedEx, Marck, Deutsche Bank, General Dynamics, Nissan, Time Warner, Yahoo, Credit Suisse, Heineken and many other companies.
And since a down equity round in the VC industry is a kiss of death, it is likely that the next time Uber needs to raise capital in another 3-6 months, its valuation will likely be around $60 billion, or greater than General Motors and just why of Ford at $62 billion. It will also be bigger - on paper of course - than Lockheed Martin, Occidental, Dow Chemical, China Telecom, MOnsanto, Caterpillar, Target, and so on.
And while we have written before about both the epic bubble in private valuations as well as how tech company valuations are "completely made up", one has to see the following table showing Uber's current, past and future valuations in context, just to get a sense of the furious valuation scramble currently taking place in the tech sector which has long since put the dot com bubble to shame.
