The ultrawealthy Italian family behind Ferrari and Fiat just invested $200 million in Uber and Lyft's fastest-growing competitor

• Via, an Uber and Lyft competitor that also runs public transit and school-bus networks, announced a new $200 million investment on Monday from Exor, an Italian holding company.
• Italy's ultrawealthy Agnelli family controls the company, with stakes in Ferrari, Fiat, the Juventus football club, and more.
• Via is still private but has its eyes on a public stock offering, founder Daniel Ramot said in January.
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Via, a quickly growing ride-hailing startup that also sells an on-demand public-transit service to cities around the world, announced a $200 million investment from one of Italy's wealthiest families that's also behind Ferrari and Fiat.

The Series E investment by Exor, the $26 billion holding company controlled by the Agnelli dynasty, values Via at $2.25 billion, the company said. It did not share a total size of the funding round, which also included new investments from Shell, Macquarie Capital, and some of Via's existing backers.

Founded in 2013, Via has now raised more than $500 million in venture funding, according to PitchBook data. The company operates Uber-like ride-hailing services in New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC, as well as on-demand public-transit services and school-bus networks in more than 100 cities worldwide.

Daniel Ramot, the company's chief executive and cofounder, has been outspoken in his love for public transit and Via's goal of improving it to reduce the prevalence of single-passenger vehicles.

"We see ourselves as enabling transit systems to be more efficient, more effective, and move more people," he said in January." Frankly, to beat the private car."

He's also blamed Uber and Lyft for "co-opting" the term "ride-sharing," since a majority of their businesses are taxi rides with a single rider.

"Driving by yourself or taking a taxi alone," he said, "and please don't hate me, is basically the same as walking into a kindergarten and lighting up a cigarette and smoking. That's what you're doing. You're inflicting secondhand smoke on all these poor people."

Eventually, Ramot has said, Via would like to go public. It's not clear how the global drawdown in equities and recession worries spurred by the spreading coronavirus could throw those plans into chaos. Uber and Lyft, already fighting to turn profitable following their largely disappointing public offerings last year, have seen massive drops in ridership as the pandemic forces people to stay home.

Via, still private, has declined to make its own financial performance public so far.

"We absolutely have a goal to take this company public," he said at the January event. "I think we should be subject to the scrutiny of public markets. We do something that's very public, so I would absolutely like to go there."

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