Only-In-U.S. Lyft Continues Global Investor Expansion With Saudi $$ Infusion

It’s now starting to get a tad ironic that the car-sharing service Lyft — which I often call Not-Uber (sorry, nice Lyft guys, but true!) — has added yet another international investor to its list, even though it only operates in the U.S. and has curtailed plans for overseas expansion.

This time, it’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who has sunk money into a variety of Silicon Valley investments, including Twitter. He and his Kingdom Holding, as well as other investors, bought just over 5 percent of the San Francisco startup at a valuation of just under $5 billion.

While that might seem like a lot, that compares to Uber — which does operate in Saudi Arabia — and its $65 billion market value.

As you may know, Lyft got a previous slug of money from China’s ride king Didi Kuaidi and also struck an Avengers-style alliance with it and other global players to battle Uber’s Ultron stylings.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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