Six years after making what at the time was its largest venture investment ever, Google's $258 million bet on Uber has multiplied by about 20-fold to be worth more than $5 billion.
Alphabet is emerging as one of the big winners in the ride-hailing boom, even though the company is viewed as a potential competitor in the space once self-driving cars hit the market. Alphabet also invested $500 million in Uber arch-rival Lyft through its late-stage investment arm, CapitalG, in October 2017. Its 5.3 percent stake in Lyft is worth $783 million as of Thursday's close. Alphabet is also locked into those shares until 180 days after last month's IPO.
David Drummond, Alphabet's senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer, had an Uber board seat until 2016, when he left because of growing competition in self-driving technology. The following year Alphabet sued Uber, claiming the ride-sharing company had stolen trade secrets when it acquired a self-driving technology start-up built by former Google executive Anthony Levandowski.
Not bad for company that lose 7bil in 2 years