SAN FRANCISCO — Uber expects to be worth as much as $91 billion when it starts selling shares next month, making its initial public offering one of the largest in the history of the technology industry.
The amended prospectus, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, kicks off the last stage of the ride-hailing company’s journey to list on the public stock markets. It is expected to mint a new generation of Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires.
Uber set a price range of $44 to $50 a share, putting its valuation at $80 billion to $91 billion, accounting for stock options and restricted stock. That would dwarf its rival Lyft, which went public last month at a valuation of more than $24 billion — but it would place Uber behind Facebook, which went public in 2012 with a market capitalization of $104 billion, and the Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba, which was valued at $168 billion in its 2014 offering.
The company said that it planned to sell 180 million shares in the offering, which could raise up to $9 billion.
Uber was last appraised at $76 billion in a private fund-raising in August, but it recently told some investors that it might be valued at about $100 billion when it goes public. The pricing will not be finalized until the day before it lists its shares in about two weeks and will change depending on investor appetite.
Uber’s offering is a milestone for “unicorn” start-ups, which are young companies that were privately valued at $1 billion or more. While many of these businesses grew quickly, riding a wave of technology like smartphones, few have demonstrated they can make money. Uber is deeply unprofitable, as is Lyft.
Such losses have caused jitters on Wall Street: Lyft’s shares now trade below their offering price, for instance. That likely prompted Uber to take a more conservative approach to the stock market.