2019 is a record year for the IPO market. To date, five U.S. tech companies have gone public, raising billions of dollars in fresh capital and making a small group of their early investors overnight billionaires.
But most of them will pale in comparison with the early believers in Uber (UBER), with the company’s impending IPO set to be the largest in Wall Street’s history. The ten-year-old ride-hailing company, despite still struggling to turn a profit and to win the trust of its low-earning drivers, is looking to raise $10.35 billion from the public market when it debuts on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) this week.
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Uber will issue 180 million shares at a valuation between $80 billion and $91.5 billion.
Here are seven individuals and companies that will see their investments pay off handsomely from Uber’s colossal IPO.
Travis Kalanick
As previously reported by Observer, Uber’s co-founder and now ousted CEO Travis Kalanick is slated to bag $9 billion from Uber’s IPO. Despite stepping down from the CEO post in June 2017 amid a series of company sandals, Kalanick still owns about seven percent of Uber and sits on the company’s 12-person board of directors.
He could have won even bigger, had he not cashed out 29 percent of his Uber equities to SoftBank last year. That partial buyout made Kalanick an official billionaire, though. He has since put that money into his own venture capital firm named 10100.
SoftBank Group
To Uber’s largest shareholder, SoftBank, the ride-hailing startup’s IPO is not only a huge, but also a fast, win. The Japanese investment powerhouse acquired 17.5 percent of Uber last year, along with several smaller investors at a valuation of just $48 million. Now, Uber is going public at a valuation of over $90 billion. That’s a 87.5 percent gain in just a year.
Chris Sacca
The Lowercase Capital founder is one of the first customers of Uber as well as an early investor. His venture capital firm invested $300,000 in Uber’s angel round in 2009. (He also helped the startup buy the name “Uber” from Universal Music Group.) Sacca currently owns four percent of Uber, which could be worth up to $36.6 billion.
Jeff Bezos
What a coincidence! The biggest IPO of 2019 will make the richest man on earth even richer.
According to Wyatt Investment Research, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos invested $37 million in Uber’s series B fundraising in 2011. That stake is expected to be worth $400 million after the IPO.
Bezos also has a stake in venture capital firm Benchmark Capital, Uber’s second largest shareholder.
Benchmark Capital
Benchmark, Uber’s largest shareholder until SoftBank came along last year, played an important role in major events throughout the company’s growth, including the ousting of Kalanick in 2017. The firm currently owns 11 percent of Uber, a stake expected to be worth $7 billion.
GV (Formerly Google Ventures)
In 2013, Google’s venture capital arm bought $258 million worth of Uber shares for just $3.55 apiece. In 2014, it invested an additional $60 million at $15 per share. In total, that stake is now worth more than $3.8 billion.
First Round Capital
The Philadelphia-based early-stage venture capital firm provided $1.5 million in seed funding for Uber’s first two financing rounds. Per The Information’s calculation, First Round Capital’s total ownership in Uber is estimated to be worth $2.6 billion after the IPO.
