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**Bolt, Uber's European Rival, Takes Aim at North America**

By Alex Perry

Mar 9, 2025, 8:10am PDT

Bolt CEO Markus Villig.

Uber and Lyft dominate ride-hailing in North America, a position that has helped them turn cash-burning operations into moneymakers. Now Bolt, an Uber rival in Europe and Africa, is trying to undercut the two ride-hailing companies in their home markets.

Earlier this year, Bolt started offering ride-hailing services in Toronto and scooter rentals in Washington through the Hopp app. Bolt is using the same playbook that it uses for its operations elsewhere. It keeps costs low with a small staff and takes a smaller cut of riders' fares than Uber and Lyft, said CEO and founder Markus Villig.

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**The Takeaway**

Estonia's Bolt is taking aim at Uber and Lyft in Canada by offering drivers more money per ride. CEO Markus Villig says the company, whose annualized gross bookings passed $10 billion late last year, can live with far leaner profits than the American duo.

"The U.S. market generally has relatively little competition," he said, which has allowed Uber and Lyft to consistently increase their profit margins. Those margins represent an opportunity "for new challengers," he said.

Villig is resuming a familiar role. His company, formerly known as Taxify, has been challenging Uber in markets outside North America for more than a decade. It took some market share from Uber in Africa, though it's far behind Uber's market share in countries such as the United Kingdom, according to Similarweb, which tracks app usage.

Its gross merchandise value, or the total value of transactions made from ride hailing, car rental, food delivery, and scooters, passed a pace of 10 billion euros ($10.86 billion) late last year. That figure, which hasn't previously been reported, is 28% higher than in 2023.

The growth and profits of Uber and Lyft in North America have attracted multiple competitors in recent years. Some, including Hovr in Toronto, Empower in Washington, and Hum in Arizona and Idaho, let drivers keep 100% of the fares. The startups instead charge drivers a flat rate per month for access to the network of passengers.

Uber and Lyft keep about 30% to 35% of the rider fare in the U.S., known as a take rate, Deutsche Bank analyst Ben Black said. By contrast, Bolt generally keeps 15% to 20% of the rider fare, leaving up to 85% for drivers, Villig said.

Uber and Lyft also operated at a loss for years while they kept prices and take rates low to encourage more riders and drivers to use the networks.

More recently, they have increased their take rates and fares, as more drivers returned to gig work after the pandemic and as the cost of car insurance the firms pay for their drivers rose.

Gridwise, an app that helps gig workers track earnings, said the median price for a ride-share ride in the U.S., excluding tips, rose 7.2% in 2024 from 2023. However, Gridwise also found that Uber drivers in the U.S. made 3.4% less year over year, while Lyft drivers made 13.9% less.

While Uber doesn't break out driver pay by country, the company said globally driver earnings are up 16% year over year as of last quarter. A Lyft spokesperson said Gridwise's numbers paint an "incomplete picture" but declined to elaborate.

Villig, who founded Bolt in Estonia in 2013 when he was still in high school, has been competing with the better-funded Uber for much of its existence. While Uber raised a $14 billion war chest in equity funding before going public, the still-public Bolt only raised $1 billion.

Much of Bolt's funding came in the last few years. In 2022, Sequoia Capital co-led a $662 million investment with Fidelity Management at an $8.4 billion valuation, including the investment. (Fidelity recently valued Bolt at $6.7 billion, according to a Caplight analysis of Fidelity's disclosures.)

With less cash available to burn, Bolt grew by reinvesting the cash it generates from some of its profitable markets.

"It caused the company to focus on efficiency," said Brett Weil, a partner at Tekne Capital Management, an investment manager that holds shares in Bolt.

For instance, Bolt's annualized gross transactions are about 10 times the equity it's raised. The equivalent for the U.S. ride-hailing companies, using the paid-in capital recorded on their balance sheets, is about 4 times for Uber and 1.6 times for Lyft.

Bolt was still burning cash as of 2023, however, while its rivals were profitable or getting close. Uber generated $3.4 billion in cash that year, and then nearly doubled that figure last year. Lyft, which burned cash in 2023, generated $766.3 million in free cash flow last year.

Bolt also generates less revenue for every dollar of gross bookings than its rivals, probably because of its presence in emerging markets. Villig said in a podcast last fall that Bolt is on pace to generate 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in revenue annually, or roughly 20% of its annualized gross bookings pace.

In contrast, Uber's annualized revenue at the end of last year was 27% of annualized gross bookings, while Lyft's was 36%.

Villig described his company's approach to challenging Uber and Lyft as "pragmatic" and "experimental." Even if Bolt only succeeds in half of the new markets where it's launching new services, that's a "good thing," he said. Bolt launched in Egypt and Costa Rica last year.

Bolt, which secured a $238 million line of credit last summer, is not likely to pursue an initial public offering this year as it's focused on expanding in Canada, said a person familiar with the matter.

Alex Perry is a reporting intern at The Information. She is studying economics, data science, and journalism at Northwestern University. She's previously worked at Axios, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and served as the editor in chief of The Daily Northwestern. Based in New York City, Alex can be reached at alex@theinformation.com.