The ride-hailing giant’s valuation is the third largest for a company going public on an American exchange.
The biggest Silicon Valley initial public offering in years turned out to be less lofty than expected.
Uber priced its public offering on Thursday at $45 a share, near the bottom of its expected price range, valuing the ride-hailing company at about $82.4 billion. It raised $8.1 billion from the I. P. O.
While the event solidifies Uber’s position as the biggest American technology company of its generation to go public, it will be a disappointment to the investors, executives and cheerleaders who had bigger dreams for it. And it raises questions about whether other money-losing Silicon Valley start-ups poised to list their shares should worry about receiving a cool reception.
The ride-hailing behemoth — which will start trading its shares on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday under the symbol UBER — will nonetheless have a market capitalization at its I. P. O. that trails only that of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, which went public in 2014 at $168 billion, and of Facebook, which was at $104 billion when it went public in 2012.
Its $82.4 billion valuation, which factors in stock options and restricted stock grants, is above its last private fund-raising valuation of $76 billion, from August. But it is below the $100 billion that Uber forecast to some investors this year — and well below the $120 billion that some of its bankers floated last year.
