Uber just blew past a huge milestone 2 years faster than Facebook

Until now, Facebook was the only startup to have a $50 billion valuation before going public.

But on Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Uber closed a new $1 billion round of funding that values the company at close to $51 billion.

Not only has Uber reached a $50 billion valuation in an impressive five years since it launched - it did so much faster than Facebook.

Uber's valuation growth is all the more impressive when you compare it to Facebook's early years.

According to BI Intelligence, it took three years for the social media giant to get to a billion-dollar "unicorn" valuation, and it was "only" worth $15 billion by its fifth year. It took almost 8 years for Facebook to get to the $50 billion threshold, before hitting its massive $100 billion IPO in 2012. Facebook is now worth around $225 billion.

Uber raised close to $1 billion in its new round, The Journal reports. In total, the company has raised more than $5 billion from investors.