Allied Capital Inc Follows Uber Technologies Inc.

New York city, New York, April 10, 2015 (Newswire.com) -  T. Rowe Price Group Inc, which has been cited previously for wanting to back the car booking service and is reportedly in discussions with the company at this stage to become a new investor, while Fidelity Investments, the company’s best known existing investor also looks likely to further increase its stake by participating in this new round of funding, in which Uber is expected to raise at least $1 billion.

 If successful in completing this new round of funding, Uber would have a valuation of between $35 billion and $40 billion over double that of its $17 billion valuation that it achieved following a June financing round, which at that time set a new record level for a U.S. based technology startup company in a direct investment round. The valuation placed Uber firmly at the top of the pile of U.S. based technology company startups which like Airbnb Inc and Dropbox Inc are valued in the eleven figure bracket.

“Uber has had ups and downs this year as it continues to expand into new territories around the world, nothing surprising about any company experiencing growing pains while developing at such a rate, but what is surprising is just the sheer size of the funding it has received this year as well as the accompanying valuations” stated Henry West, Senior Trading Analyst at Allied Capital Inc.

With a valuation in the $35 billion to $40 billion range, the San Francisco-based Uber would be placed roughly at around 1.5 times the rate of capitalization of Twitter Inc, the micro-blogging service and around the same size as Delta Airlines Inc, Kraft Foods Group Inc and Salesforce.com Inc. In further comparison the internationally recognized and operating rental car company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. has $11.3 billion in market capitalization.

  “ We would be highly surprised if Uber didn’t meet its objectives in this fund raising round given its previous success in this arena and the knowledge that its most likely new backer has been expressing interest for some time now in addition to Fidelity doubling down on its commitment” detailed Henry West of Allied Capital Inc.