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People use a smartphone to unlock LimeBike shared electric scooters on the Embarcadero in San Francisco.
Uber is partnering with electric scooter startup Lime, the companies said Monday.
It’s the second scooter tie-up for Uber, which aims to be the leading one-stop-shop for transportation. The ride-hailing firm in April bought Jump Bikes, which also offers scooter rentals. Uber will make Lime rentals available in the app and add its logo to the lime green scooters.
Uber has increasingly turned to partnerships and mergers as it competes with Lyft, which last week announced it was buying the firm behind New York’s Citi Bikes and San Francisco’s GoBikes. CNBC reported last week Uber had also looked at buying Motivate, but walked away.
Uber also plans to invest in Lime in a round led by Alphabet’s GV venture arm in the startup’s most recent funding round,. The cooperation is ironic given that Uber and Alphabet’s self-driving car group, Waymo, were locked in litigation over trade secrets earlier this year; that lawsuit was settled in February. Alphabet has signaled a heavy interest in transportation through a series of acquisitions and internal projects
Uber VP Rachel Holt said, “Our investment and partnership in Lime is another step towards our vision of becoming a one stop shop for all your transportation needs. Lime already has an expansive footprint, and we’re excited to incorporate their scooters into the Uber app so consumers have another fast, affordable option to get around their city, especially to and from public transit.”
A partnership and heavyweight endorsement could give Lime an edge in the burgeoning electric scooter space. Lime and rival Bird have each reached unicorn status, topping valuations of $1 billion.
The news was first reported by Bloomberg.
