Uber now valued at more than $50bn with Microsoft reportedly among investors

In comparison, earlier this year, competing ride-sharing app Lyft raised $530 million in funding, which valued the company at $2.5 billion.

While it took Facebook almost seven years to achieve a $50 billion valuation, Uber has hit it in just five years. “The filing is available to the public”.

The Journal says investors in this latest round include Microsoft and Bennett, Coleman, and Company Ltd., the flagship brand of India media conglomerate The Times Group. (Previous rounds have included undisclosed funders.) Microsoft declined requests for comment.

The San Francisco start-up has long kept its expenses down by claiming that it’s merely a technology company matching drivers with riders, not a auto service company with vehicles to maintain.

Earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported Uber closed a $1-billion financing round at a valuation of about $51 billion, and that Microsoft participated in the deal. And given how much money the company may be losing, hailing more investors at a valuation that might make the company worth significantly more than Facebook could become increasingly hard.

A person familiar with the matter told The New York Times that Microsoft agreed to contribute a substantial amount to the funding round. In 2007, Microsoft paid $US240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, an investment that eventually led to product integrations between the two companies.

Uber and Microsoft have also teamed up before: Uber presented at Microsoft’s recent Build conference, where it showed off an integration with Outlook that would let you hail a cab to your next appointment straight from the calendar.

The company’s fast-paced growth has attracted investors, with its establishment in 2009 in San Francisco, is now doing business within 58 countries across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Uber has also been in the news for upsetting regulators who have in turn sued the company or banned them across the globe.