Ride hailing company Uber Technologies Inc said Wednesday the ride-sharing company is on track to launch an initial public offering in 2019 and that it had no plans to sell its self-driving car research arm, a report by Reuters said.
Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said Uber is not worried if rival Lyft went public first because he expects enough demand for both companies.
"Historically, there has been plenty of funding for Uber, for Lyft, etc and we don't think that's going to change," he said. "This is an enormous market we are going after."
The CEO also said that Uber was "quite optimistic" it would be able to resume testing of self-driven cars in 2018 after a fatal crash last March in Arizona.
READ: Toyota offers $500mln in funding to Uber as part of driverless car venture, says WSJ
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is reportedly hiring a pair of prominent lawyers because he is under investigation by the SEC over his botched plan to take the company private, a tweet by Fox Business Network correspondent Charles Gasparino said.
SCOOP: As @SEC_Enforcement ramps up its investigation into @Tesla and @elonmusk, the embattled CEO retains 2 white-collar legal heavyweights for his defense team--Former SEC Commish Roel Campos, and Steve Farina of William & Connolly. more now @FoxBusiness
— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) September 5, 2018
Gasparino said the hiring of the lawyers speaks to the serious issues facing Musk. The co-founder of the electric-car company announced in early August he wanted to take Tesla private but was then forced to call off the plan after controversy engulfed the proposal.
The Tesla board formed a panel to look into the proposal. Some investors accused Musk of misleading the market.
Tesla shares slid 2.6% to US$281.39.
READ: Justice Department threatens investigation into Twitter and Facebook as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey delivers testimony before US House Committee
Shares of Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) wilted Wednesday during the testimony by CEO Jack Dorsey after Republicans accused the messaging service of discriminating against conservative accounts.
Twitter has been repeatedly accused of a practice commonly called 'shadow banning' in which the platform de-emphasizes certain accounts in search results. Republicans claim conservative accounts were shadow banned, a charge Twitter denies.
Twitter faces a number of challenges: ISIS terrorists, trolls, bots and US President Donald Trump, probably its most famous user, a report by Vanity Fair said.
Combating the flood of abuse is “like trying to put out a fire in a house,” a former trust and safety executive for another tech company said in the report. “Once you do that, four more fires pop up in its place.”
Twitter stock declined 5.57% to US$32.90.