Lyft has some pretty wealthy friends. The ride-hailing service recently announced that General Motors invested $500 million in the company, according to the New York Times. This comes after Lyft announced that it had raised $1 billion in a recent round of venture financing.
The investment also has GM working with Lyft on developing self-driving cars, which will be used by the ride-hailing service.
"We strongly believe that autonomous vehicle go-to-market strategy is through a network, not through individual car ownership," said Lyft's President John Zimmer.
The recent investment in Lyft will also help propel GM's own plans to create autonomous vehicles by 2017. "We, at GM, have had the view for a little while that the world of mobility is going change in the next few years more than it has changed in the last 50 years," said Dan Ammann, president of GM, according to Fortune.
Lyft was recently valued at $5.5 billion, according to the Verge. It still has a long way to go, however, before it can reach Uber, which is valued at $62.5 billion.
Lyft's primary competition, Uber, is also working on creating self-driving cars, and both are competing against other companies like Google and Tesla to see who can perfect this technology first.
