Uber to give Waymo US$245m shares

SAN FRANCISCO: Uber Technologies Inc agreed to give Waymo about US$245 million (RM965.3 million) in closely held stock to cut short a trade-secret theft trial, ending a high-stakes conflict that already cost the ride-hailing giant its top driverless car engineer and threatened to further embarrass the company.

The deal would give the Alphabet Inc driverless-car unit 0.34 per cent of Uber equity, said Waymo.

The actual value of those illiquid shares would depend on how Uber is valued when it goes public, something the company said it aimed to do in late next year.

SoftBank Group Corp just completed a US$9.3 billion deal with Uber in which it valued Uber’s shares at a blended US$54 billion valuation.

At that price, the settlement is worth US$184 million. Alphabet already owns Uber shares since it invested in the company in 2013.

The court showdown captivated Silicon Valley during a year in which Uber weathered multiple scandals that drove co-founder Travis Kalanick out of his job as chief executive officer.

Uber and Waymo are rivals in the nascent automated driving industry, which both firms believe to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue.

“Waymo had already achieved most of what it needed, and Uber, with a fundamental change in management, no longer had the emotional investment that would justify carrying on the fight,” said Jim Pooley, a tradesecrets expert who has followed the case.

A spokesman for Waymo said the company “reached an agreement with Uber that we believe will protect Waymo’s intellectual property now and into the future. We are committed to working with Uber to make sure that each company develops its own technology”.