Lime raises $167M in IPO after years of teasing a public debut
Micromobility company Lime has raised $167 million in its IPO. The nine-year-old scooter and bike company, which is backed by Uber, sold 6.68 million shares
Micromobility company Lime has raised $167 million in its IPO. The nine-year-old scooter and bike company, which is backed by Uber, sold 6.68 million shares at $25 each, at the mid-point of its $24 to $26 price range. Shares started trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker “LIME” on Wednesday afternoon, jumping around 9% in the first hour. Lime has been considering an IPO for years. In 2021, following a $523 million funding round, CEO Wayne Ting told TechCrunch the company was eyeing an IPO in 2022. He re-heated the idea in 2023, saying that Lime was still waiting for the right market conditions.
The long-awaited IPO pegs Lime’s valuation at around $1.66 billion, just shy of the price fellow micromobility company Bird got when it merged with a special purpose acquisition company in 2021. Lime needs the funds. In its IPO filing in May, the company expressed “substantial doubt” that it could continue as a going concern. Lime said it needs the IPO proceeds to pay around $1 billion in liabilities, more than half of which is due by the end of this year. Without an IPO, Lime told prospective investors, it would need to find other sources of financing. Lime is riding that financial edge because the micromobility industry has proven to be fairly brutal over the last few years, even in the good times.
Bird had to file for bankruptcy protection and restructure after it went public, and other competitors have either merged (Tier and Dott), been delisted from major exchanges (Micromobility.com), or gone out of business entirely (Superpedestrian). Amid the chaos, Lime has managed to improve its revenue over the last few years. It generated $521 million in 2023, $686.6 million in 2024, and $886.7 million last year. The company also trimmed its losses from $122.3 million in 2023, to just $33.9 million in 2024, though that figure edged back up in 2025 to $59.3 million. That growth has come largely from Lime’s ability to scale globally.
It now operates in 230 cities across 29 countries. But the company is also somewhat dependent on Uber, which owns 24% of Lime, and accounted for more than 14% of its revenue last year. (Uber allows people to book Lime rides through its app in some cities.) This story has been updated with information about Lime’s stock starting to trade.
The BriefWire