Lyft Confirms Alphabet Investment as Part of $1 Billion Funding Round

Along with the infusion of Alphabet cash, CapitalG partner David Lawee will join Lyft's board, the ride-sharing company announced in a brief blog post. The alliance between Alphabet and Lyft could be bad news for Uber, Lyft's main ride-sharing rival. While Uber remains much larger than Lyft, it has stumbled recently due to a series of scandals, as well as increased pressure from regulators.

Uber is also being sued by Alphabet's Waymo self-driving car division, which accuses the ride-sharing company of using trade secrets stolen by engineer, Anthony Levandowski, when he was a Waymo employee. Waymo CEO John Krafcik has said the company is investigating autonomous ride sharing and autonomous trucking, the two businesses Uber hopes to use to commercialize its autonomous-driving tech.

Waymo already has a partnership with Lyft involving the development of self-driving cars. Lyft could give Waymo a platform for its technology, something the Google unit urgently needs. While Waymo has been working on self-driving cars for years, it hasn't found a way to commercialize the technology.

Lyft's self-driving car interests extend beyond the Waymo partnership. The company is also partnering with startups NuTonomy and Drive.ai to launch autonomous ride-sharing pilot programs, and in July it announced plans for an in-house self-driving car division.

Alphabet's cash could turbocharge these efforts, or just give Lyft more funding to expand its ride-sharing operations. Either way, it's another potential blow for Uber.