Ride Sharing Service Gets a Financial Lyft from British Auto Maker

San Francisco-based ride-sharing firm Lyft received a $25 million investment from British auto maker Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital fund, InMotion. This was part of Lyft’s $600 million funding round in April 2017. Other notable Lyft investors include Alibaba, Janus, Icahn Enterprises, Tencent and others.

In addition, Jaguar Land Rover is providing Lyft with a fleet of vehicles and utilizing the ride-sharing company’s open platform for autonomous car technology. Lyft also has nonexclusive collaboration agreements with nuTonomy, Google’s Waymo, and GM regarding autonomous vehicles.

Lyft, the country’s second largest ride-sharing company, which operates in 300 U.S. cities, seems to be leveraging partnership relationships, while market leader Uber is leaning toward a proprietary approach as both are engaged in a race to the self-driving vehicle finish line. Lyft, which was recently valued at $7.5 billion (Uber’s market cap is $69 billion), has targeted 2021 to have its autonomous car fleet on the road.

Lyft may be trying to capitalize on Uber’s recent issues, which include investor displeasure with CEO Travis Kalanick, an intellectual property lawsuit, and negative reports on Uber’s corporate culture. 

Jaguar Land Rover, which is Britain’s largest automaker, is owned by Tata Motors of India.