Japan’s SoftBank bids to buy Uber shares at a 30% discount of its recent valuation of $68.5 billion

According to a Bloomberg report, Japan’s SoftBank is offering to buy shares of unicorn startup, Uber Technologies at a valuation of $48 billion. This amounts to a 30 percent discount of its most recent valuation of $68.5 billion, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday. The bid has already been approved by the Uber board. The purchase would give the Japanese bank up to 17 percent of Uber.  Representatives of Uber and SoftBank declined to comment.

In addition to the $48 billion investment,  SoftBank will also invest additional $1 billion in Uber.  The startup has been making plans to go public by 2019, and investors are waiting to see if Uber can maintain a high valuation before it stages an initial public offering. It is unclear whether any of Uber’s shareholders agree to sell their shares to SoftBank at a discount of 30%. In the meantime, Uber continues to rack up rides and losses amid setbacks. As reported last week, Uber paid hackers  Uber paid hackers $100,000 to cover up massive data breach last year that exposed the personal information of about 57 million customer accounts.