Turo, the peer-to-peer car-sharing startup, has initiated the confidential process of filing for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission.
The number of shares to be offered in the IPO and the price range have not yet been determined, the company said in a statement. Turo declined to provide additional information to TechCrunch.
The eleven-year-old Turo’s marketplace is analogous to Airbnb, letting car owners post an ad to rent out their vehicle on its app and website. Cars are available to rent in more than 5,500 cities across four countries, Turo says on its website. That includes Germany, where Turo took over Daimler AG’s car-sharing subsidiary Croove alongside an investment deal.
The company had a $250 million Series E in July 2019, which pushed the company into unicorn status and “past the billion-dollar valuation mark,” CEO Andre Haddad said in a blog post. Turo followed that up with a $30 million extension round the following February, bringing its total funding to date to over $500 million.
Turo did not have a completely smooth ride during the pandemic; like other transportation startups Bird and Getaround, Turo laid off 30% of its workforce, or 108 employees, in March 2020 according to data tracker Layoffs.fyi.
