Incredible! Uber raises ANOTHER $1.2 billion round!

Uber has now raised a total of $2.7 billion in funding, and is reportedly valued at $40 billion

If there was ever any doubt, it is now official: investors are really not worried at all about negative press affecting Uber.

The company, which raised a record-breaking $1.2 billion back in June, announced on Thursday that is has raised another $1.2 billion in funding. That's $2.4 billion raised in six months!

Prior to these mega-rounds, Uber had raised $307.5 million from Benchmark, Google Ventures, TPG Growth, Jeff Bezos, Crunchfund, Goldman Sachs, First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital, and more. Last August, the company raised a $258 million round. It's total funding now stands at  $2.7 billion.

The round may not even yet be finished, as a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed the company looking to raise as much as $1.8 billion for the round. The company is reported to now be worth $40 billion. None of the investors in the round were named.

With that funding has come tremendous growth, Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, wrote in a blog post, with it going from  60 cities at the beginning of 2014 to 250, and 21 countries to 50.

"We are 6 times bigger today than 12 months ago – and grew faster this year than last. This progress is remarkable, but it is in the coming years that Uber truly scales and the impact in cities becomes visible," he said. "In 2015 alone, Uber will generate over 1mm jobs in cities around the world and with that millions of people may decide that they no longer need to own a car because using Uber will be cheaper than owning one. Parking could become less strained in our biggest cities, and city congestion may actually start to ease due to uberPOOL’s expansion and success."

The company will use the funding to expand even further into the Asia Pacific region, an area in which Uber has been pretty aggressive with in recent years. In 2013 it expanded to Singapore, South Korea, Taipei, Dubai, Shanghai and Bangalore. In April of this year came the big one: the company began rolling out its services in Beijing.

Uber, of course, has been in the press for all the wrong reasons, lately, especially after VP Emil Michael suggested that the company should devote $1 million to dig up dirt on the personal lives and families of journalists who say mean things about the company. The bad press even led to some questioning how investors would react.

Kalanick addressed these issues directly in his blog post.

"This kind of growth has also come with significant growing pains. The events of the recent weeks have shown us that we also need to invest in internal growth and change. Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them are the first steps. We are collaborating across the company and seeking counsel from those who have gone through similar challenges to allow us to refine and change where needed," he said.

Whatever issues the company has, and it definitely has some, it seems like almost an unstoppable juggernaut now.

(Image source: businessinsider.com)