Senate asks Uber why hack of 57M users wasn't disclosed Congress wants answers from Uber about why it failed to disclose a massive data breach in October 2016 until last week and how information on 57 million accounts may have been compromised. The leaders of the Senate Commerce and Finance Committees on Monday sent a letter to new Uber Technologies Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi asking about the breach and the San Francisco company's response. (Automotive News)
• Softbank Puts a Heavy Price on Uber Scandals The Softbank-led consortium that intends to invest up to $10 billion in Uber is making clear what it thinks of the scandals that keep coming to light (Waymo alleged yesterday Uber had withheld evidence in their looming court case, while a pilot service in Israel was hit with an injunction ). Its first offer to exiting shareholders reportedly values the company at only $48 billion, nearly one-third below the valuation at its last funding round. The two-stage deal Softbank is conditional on shareholders tendering 14% of the company's stock, which may encourage them to band together and hold out for more. But if this year has proved anything, it's that the world doesn't see Uber and its shareholders the way they see themselves. Fortune
Judge tells Uber lawyer: ‘It looks like you covered this up’ In two days of testimony that ended Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Uber lawyers had to defend what a federal judge has described as an effort to withhold evidence from an intellectual-theft trial. The case pits the ride-hailing company against Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. The trial was rescheduled for Feb. 5, with jury selection set to begin on Jan. 31. (New York Times)
SoftBank succeeds in tender offer for large stake in Uber SoftBank Group Corp. won its bid to buy a major stake in Uber Technologies Inc. at a steep discount to the company’s previous valuation in a deal that gives the world’s biggest tech investor sway over the most valuable U.S. startup. Uber investors and employees tendered shares equal to about 20 percent of the company in an offer by a SoftBank-led consortium that values Uber at $48 billion, people familiar with the matter said.(Wall Street Journal)
Uber sells its Xchange Leasing portfolio to Fair As Uber works on trying to find a more profitable path ahead for its transportation-on-demand service, it has sold off one of its units that sat peripherally to that business. Fair, the car leasing startup that announced debt and equity funding of up to $1 billion in October, has acquired the active leasing portfolio of Xchange Leasing, a service Uber first established in 2015 to lease new and nearly new vehicles to drivers.(TechCrunch)
Uber partners with JUMP on electric bike share Uber is getting into the bike-sharing game. The transportation network is partnering with electric bike-share company JUMP on a limited pilot in San Francisco. Participants in the pilot can pick up JUMP e-bikes using the Uber app and drop them off anywhere within a designated bike zone. (GeekWire)
Why male Uber drivers earn more than women In theory, working in the gig economy is one-way women can bypass many of the structural biases they face in traditional workplaces. In some gig positions, the employer doesn’t even know the gender of its workers. That’s the case at Uber, where male drivers in the U.S. earn 7 percent more per hour than women, according to a paper from researchers at Uber, Stanford and the University of Chicago.(Quartz)
Elon Musk derides Uber's flying-taxi dream For someone with big aspirations of his own, Elon Musk doesn't seem to be as supportive of other people's outlandish goals. The Tesla, SpaceX and Boring Company CEO took to Twitter to deride Uber's plans to build a fleet of flying air taxis after being asked a question by journalist Anirban Ghoshal on behalf of Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Musk replied with snark to a suggestion that flying taxis would be a better alternative to his ideas.(TheStreet)