Uber reportedly wants to raise $1.5-2B more on a huge $50B valuation

Alternative cab service Uber is looking to raise between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in a new funding round that would value the company at $50 billion or more, according to a report that surfaced late last night.

The valuation would be increasing from $41 billion, the post-money valuation for Uber’s funding round in December 2014, according to the Wall Street Journal report, which cites unnamed sources. The report does not name specific investors for the new round.

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Uber had no comment to share with VentureBeat regarding the new report.

The report comes less than four months after Uber confirmed to VentureBeat that it had raised $1.6 billion in convertible debt from Goldman Sachs’ private wealth management clients.

Uber has been spending money in all kinds of ways — setting up its services in more and more cities around the world, dealing with regulatory pushback, fighting lawsuits, starting up new kinds of programs, and even revving up an autonomous-vehicle program in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University.

The new money could also help Uber do more acquisitions. The company announced its first acquisition, mapping company deCarta, in March. And earlier this week Uber was reported to be bidding as much as $3 billion on Nokia’s Here mapping division.

For some time now Uber has carried a valuation that exceeds that of almost all other privately held startups.

The $50 billion figure in this report would be truly staggering, putting it even further ahead of other fast-growing companies like Airbnb (its latest reported valuation is $20 billion) and Snapchat ($15 billion, reportedly). Xiaomi of China, which was said to have a $45 billion valuation at the end of 2014, would not be far behind Uber at its new reported valuation.

San Francisco-based Uber started in 2009.