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Comment by a13n | Hacker News Reader

"Waymo is getting .34% of Uber's equity in the settlement, which at a $72 billion valuation, is valued at about $245 million."

https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/961993637348327424

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That's a stale valuation, Uber's latest round was significantly down from that. The Softbank tender valued Uber at $48B, so a more up-to-date estimate would be:

  0.34 * 0.01 * $48B = $0.163B

They aren't directly comparable given the difference between common and preferred shares.

Do we know if Uber is getting preferred or common shares in the settlement?

s/Uber/Google

On my mobile device this amusingly read as “= $0.” before I realized I needed to scroll to the right.

Who knows, perhaps that may end up being the most accurate value..

A tender offer is not a round. Most tender offers for stock (common or preferred) in illiquid companies are at a discount to new preferred stock from the most recent round.

This happened with multiple other companies like Facebook and AirBnB, so I don't see why in the case of Uber that anyone who is informed can conclude that it was a down round.

Those numbers are insane.

Insanely low, given that Waymo could have crippled Uber if successful.

So does this mean perhaps their case wasn't as strong as they thought?

Could they, though? Uber's valuation is based on its taxi technology business. The self-driving stuff might be their long play, but certainly not the source of their value.

I have no idea what kinds of damages Waymo might have been able to extract from Uber, but it seems very unlikely that it would have been in the multi-billion-dollar range. $245 million is a huge sum, add to that the saved cost of ongoing litigation.

The value of the taxi technology is predicated on surviving high losses for a few years to secure riders for the autonomous fleet that will emerge. The driver component in the current equation is 100% subsidized by investors.

Uber value is based on adopting SDC. Otherwise the business does not work long term.

> Uber value is based on adopting SDC.

Not sure what you were trying to say?

Nonsense. SDC becoming viable on scale is decade or two in the future. Uber is valued based on its ride sharing and food delivery business. Investors apparently believe it can be profitable on big scale therefor good investment.

They were asking for about $1b in damages, according to an article I just read. This is a substantial fraction of that.

I thought it was $1.9b originally.

Either way. Generally the asked-for damages is much larger than the settlement.

This is actually a pretty typical fraction for a settlement.

How so? How do you prove the financial implications of a technology that doesn't quite exist or provide financial benefit right now?

You use your opponents own estimates of that value. Uber would have had those; and I'd be willing to bet they were sky-high given their strategy.

I am surprised a mandatory licensing of Waymo’s technology wasn’t part of the settlement.

My takeaway is that Uber does not in fact possess any Waymo trade secrets. Otherwise they would have included a license as part of the settlement.

It's just the official admission of guilt. Nor for the money.

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