Uber, in its filing documents, said drivers will be a long-term priority, and it announced plans to give some drivers a piece of the wealth it is raising. Uber said it will provide a “one-time cash” bonus to more than 1 million drivers around the globe, a more than $300 million payout, on April 27. U.S. drivers will receive between $100 and $10,000, depending on how many rides they have given. In the U.S., drivers can elect to receive the bonus in cash or direct it into Uber’s directed share program to receive the equivalent amount of stock market shares.<doc-sep>The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Uber files for IPO Uber has filed its S-1, setting the stage for the transportation company to go public next month. The company will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “UBER.” Uber had already disclosed most of the financial information released yesterday, but among the tidbits revealed: It spent $457 million on self-driving and flying car R&D last year. 2. Disney+ streaming service launches on November 12, with a price of $6.99 per month Executives also offered the first look at what they said is a “working prototype” of the Disney+ service, which will also be the exclusive streaming home of “The Simpsons.” 3. Nintendo Labo VR review In comics form! 4. Apple’s iOS will now confirm you meant to subscribe to that app Apple has added another step to prevent users from accidentally signing up for an iOS app’s subscription — or, from being tricked into it by a scammy app not playing by the rules. 5. The chat feature may soon return to Facebook’s mobile app That’s according to researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who discovered an unreleased feature that brings limited chat features back into the core social networking app. 6. CEO Jennifer Tejada just took PagerDuty public; we talked about the roadshow, the IPO and what comes next “The vision doesn’t change,” Tejada said. “We intend to do exactly what we’ve been doing, which is to provide the best real-time operations platform available to companies as they undergo digital transformation to meet the growing demands of their customers.” 7. Twin astronaut study suggests interplanetary travel may not be a health risk The human body “remains robust and resilient” after almost a year in space, according to a long-term, multi-institutional study of twins, one of whom lived aboard the International Space Station for 340 days while the other remained on Earth.<doc-sep>Bank of America CEO on raising minimum wage: It's an investment in our teammates President Joe Biden stops to talk to the media as he drives a Ford F-150 Lightning truck at Ford Dearborn Development Center, Tuesday, May 18, 2021, in Dearborn, Mich. Ethereum's 27-year-old founder says we're in a crypto bubble. Did it just burst? Vitalik Buterin, co-founder and inventor of Ethereum speaks during Samsung Developer Conference in San Jose, California on October 30, 2019. QAnon is spreading in churches. These pastors are trying to stop it Left: James Kendall is the Senior Pastor at Grace Community Church in Madera, California. Kendall gave a sermon at his church warning congregants about QAnon. Right: Ben Marsh is a pastor at First Alliance Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He has seen members of his church share conspiracy theories on their social media pages. Carlos Ghosn says he has to tell his side of the story TOPSHOT - Former Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn looks on before addressing a large crowd of journalists on his reasons for dodging trial in Japan, where he is accused of financial misconduct, at the Lebanese Press Syndicate in Beirut on January 8, 2020. - Ghosn arrived at the venue, making his first public appearance since skipping bail in Japan. The fugitive tycoon, who denies any wrongdoing, skipped bail while awaiting trial on multiple charges of financial misconduct including allegedly under-reporting his compensation to the tune of $85 million. (Photo by JOSEPH EID/AFP via Getty Images) B25_25594_R James Bond (Daniel Craig) prepares to shoot in NO TIME TO DIE, an EON Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios film Credit: Nicola Dove © 2020 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (CNN Business) — Two years ago, Uber was nearly derailed by allegations of sexism and harassment, a damning investigation into its workplace culture and the exodus of nearly all of its C-suite. Now, it’s poised to make its Wall Street debut. Uber filed paperwork to go public on Thursday in what is likely to be one of the biggest public offerings ever for a technology company. The IPO caps off Uber’s rapid and very public effort to overhaul its internal culture and move past a long list of scandals that upended the company. But as it prepares to go public, Uber continues to face challenges. In his letter to shareholders in the company’s IPO filing, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi admitted to the company making “missteps” on its road to go public. “Of course, in getting from point A to point B we didn’t get everything right,” he wrote. “Some of the attributes that made Uber a wildly successful startup — a fierce sense of entrepreneurialism, our willingness to take risks that others might not, and that famous Uber hustle — led to missteps along the way. “In fact, when I joined Uber as CEO, many people asked me why I would leave the stability of my previous job for one that was anything but. My answer was simple: Uber is a once-in-a-generation company, and the opportunity ahead of it is enormous.” The company lost $1.8 billion in 2018, an unprecedented sum for a company about to go public. The filing noted its revenue was up 42% in 2018 to $11.3 billion. In its fourth quarter, Uber had 3.9 million drivers on its platform and users took 1.5 billion trips. But Lyft (LYFT), its chief rival, gained market share amid Uber’s stumbles. And Uber, as well as Lyft (LYFT), faces ongoing scrutiny over safety and the steps it is taking to protect passengers. What’s more, Lyft, the closest proxy to Uber on the stock market, quickly fell below its IPO price after going public last month. Lyft’s shares hit a new low this week, raising concerns for the stampede of unicorns — Silicon Valley shorthand for startups valued at $1 billion or more — looking to go public this year. Uber does a U-Turn For years, Uber seemed unstoppable. The company bulldozed ahead of ride-hailing rivals through a mix of aggressive fundraising, dirty tricks and a take-no-prisoners attitude toward expansion in the United States and abroad. Along the way, Uber destabilized the taxi industry, became the most valuable US startup and emerged as the darling of Silicon Valley, spawning an entire category of companies billing themselves as the “Uber for X.” But that changed in 2017 when former engineer Susan Fowler rocked the company by making public allegations of sexism and harassment in a lengthy blog post. An internal investigation revealed a reckless office culture where “toe-stepping” was a prized value and executives had unchecked power. Travis Kalanick, Uber’s cofounder and then CEO, admitted he needed to “grow up” after being caught on camera arguing with an Uber driver. Kalanick was ultimately ousted in June 2017. At that point, Uber was operating without a CEO, CFO, COO or CMO. Uber replaced the brash Kalanick with Dara Khosrowshahi, a seasoned executive who previously ran Expedia (EXPE). Khosrowshahi quickly stressed that Uber had to change. “What got us here is not what’s going to get us to the next level,” he said. Since then, he has revamped the company’s cultural norms, which now include maxims like “We Do The Right Thing,” in stark contrast to Kalanick’s edict to “Always Be Hustlin’.” He’s made key executive hires, including a CFO after three years without one. And he’s put to rest some outstanding crises, including a major lawsuit with Google’s self-driving car unit Waymo over the alleged stealing of trade secrets. He has taken a more agreeable, conciliatory approach with cities and regulators, though there are some limits to that. For example, Uber sued New York City in February over its temporary cap on new vehicle licenses, claiming the city plans to make the cap permanent. Under Khosrowshahi, Uber also reconsidered its efforts to operate all across the world. “One of the potential dangers of our global strategy is that we take on too many battles across too many fronts and with too many competitors,” he said last year. But safety remains a challenge for the company. Uber continues to find itself in the spotlight over unflattering incidents, ranging from a pedestrian being struck and killed by one of its self-driving vehicles to a CNN investigation into sexual assault and abuse by ride-hailing drivers. Uber vs. Lyft Uber had been waging a winner-take-all-battle, but its troubles proved to be an opening for its much smaller rival in the United States. In it its filing to go public, Lyft said its share of the US ridehailing market spiked to 39% in December 2018 from 22% at the end of 2016, a period that coincides with Uber working through its scandals and leadership changes. The narrowing gap may force Uber to continue spending heavily on advertising and promotional offers to attract more riders. Lyft, like Uber, is operating deep in the red right now amid that fight. Lyft lost nearly $1 billion in 2018. Yet, the two companies have also taken different approaches to expansion. Uber has invested in a suite of services, including freight shipping and meal deliveries. The latter, Uber Eats, is seen as a key growth driver for the company. Khosrowshahi told CNN Business in August that “Uber is not a one-note company. We’re a selection of different businesses, with different maturities and growth profiles.” Lyft, by comparison, says it’s uninterested in these supplementary business lines. “We are solely focused on consumer transportation,” Lyft cofounder John Zimmer said in a video pitch to investors last month ahead of its IPO. “Not food. Not trucking.” Uber also invested real money and resources to expand across several continents, before selling off some of its regional businesses. Recently, however, it showed a continuing commitment to be a global brand with the $3.1 billion acquisition of Careem, a Middle East rival. Lyft’s claim as an international company is more aspirational. The company currently only operates in the United States and Canada. For all the rivalries between the two companies, Uber and Lyft may be tied at the hip for now. If Lyft’s stock continues to fall, it could make Uber’s road to Wall Street bumpier.<doc-sep>
Finally, after years of IPO chatter and expanding into food delivery, bikes, and self-driving cars, Uber has filed to go public. Uber was created in San Francisco back in 2009 as a vehicle-for-hire app and became the quintessential "gig economy" company with an independently contracted workforce providing rides. After Thursday's filing, the company is expected to start publicly trading in May. Uber's smaller competitor Lyft went public as the first ride-hailing app with a $24 billion valuation last month. That created chatter that Uber would hit a nearly record-breaking $100 billion valuation, but it didn't disclose what valuation it was seeking in its filing. SEE ALSO: Uber just made the largest tech deal in Middle East history Uber has been open with its financials over the past year. With most of its finances voluntarily divulged, we got a sense of how unprofitable ride-sharing is — well before Lyft's official IPO filing confirmed huge annual losses. Uber has slowed the bleeding, but even with an increased $11.3 billion in revenue last year, it lost $1.8 billion. It doesn't help that Lyft's stock has been dropping in the weeks since its arrival on the NASDAQ, where shares sold for $72 at the IPO. Now it's down to $62. To reach its IPO-filing moment, Uber has been through many transformations. The most notable change was when founder Travis Kalanick was kicked out and former Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi arrived in August 2017. Last year the Uber logo and brand changed under the new CEO. Only two years ago, Uber's workplace culture was known as aggressive, inappropriate, and rife with sexism. Khosrowshahi has worked to turn around that image while battling other major issues such as driver pay and benefits, the first autonomous vehicle fatality, and pushback from the traditional cab industry in cities around the world. The company brought on its first chief financial officer in three years just last August in a move that showed it was serious about going public. And here we are.