Lyft, the main U.S. ride-sharing rival to Uber, says today that it passed $1 billion in revenue in 2017. And it says its revenue grew 168 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2017, almost three times faster than Uber’s reported 61 percent growth.
Lyft says it passed $1 billion in revenue last year — and is growing faster than Uber
Uber is still much bigger — but Lyft is still alive.
Uber, of course, is still much larger than Lyft — it generated a reported $7.5 billion in revenue last year and operates in many more cities and countries. While its fourth-quarter growth may have been smaller than Lyft’s percentage-wise, it was still almost certainly many times larger dollar-wise. Both companies are still unprofitable.
But the big-picture reality is that despite Uber’s head start, its early dominance, ability to raise massive amounts of financing, aggressive (often allegedly illegal) growth tactics, faster move into self-driving cars and everything else in its favor, it has not been able to destroy Lyft.
Instead, Lyft capitalized somewhat on Uber’s missteps and unsavory reputation, raised another $2 billion last year, gained market share, launched its first international market last year (Toronto) and seems poised to exist for the foreseeable future.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
