Uber Is Generating A Staggering Amount Of Revenue

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Travis Kalanick, Uber

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Mobile ride hailing startup Uber is expected to hit an annual revenue run rate of $10 billion by the end of 2015, sources told Business Insider's Henry Blodget.

Uber keeps 20% of every transaction, which means Uber will be netting about $2 billion on $10 billion gross revenue.

What's more, most of Uber's revenue comes from 10 of its earliest cities, including San Francisco and New York. When its other 140+ cities mature, you can imagine that $10 billion revenue figure multiplying quickly. San Francisco alone generates hundreds of millions of dollars for Uber. Uber is operating in more than 45 countries without having made a single acquisition.

Let's say that all again:

Uber is expected to generate $10 billion of which it keeps $2 billion in the next year or two.

That's not to say the company is profitable. It spends tons of money on marketing tactics to recruit new users and drivers. Still, those figures for a five-year-old startup are staggering.

To put that in perspective, Facebook is expected to generate $10 billion for the first time this year, after 10 years of operation. Granted, Uber and Facebook are entirely different businesses (advertising versus transactional) but yah, $10 billion is a lot.

Blodget also learned that Uber's revenue will grow about 300% this year and it's expected to grow another 300% next year. A snapshot of Uber's financials obtained by Valleywag in late 2013 showed Uber generating about $20 million per week.

Further, Blodget's sources believe Uber will go public in a few years at a $50-100 billion valuation. Uber's last valuation exceeded $18 billion.

SEE ALSO: No, Really, Uber Could Be A $100 Billion Company

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Alyson is the Editor-in-Chief and CCO at Fortune.  She was previously a co Editor-in-Chief overseeing Business Insider's tech and business coverage.She joined Business Insider in July 2008 as the company's sixth employee. She started as a sales planner before joining the editorial team in 2010, where she became a startup reporter and was first to cover some of today's largest tech companies, including Pinterest, Tinder, Instagram, Uber and Snap. Alyson rose to become a senior correspondent, then Executive Editor.She was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider in 2016, at which point she became the youngest and only woman to run a global business publication. Under her leadership, the business division has grown to hundreds of  millions of monthly readers.Alyson was a host of  Insider's conferences and launched a podcast, "Success! How I Did It," where she interviewed influencers ranging from Sheryl Sandberg to Steve Ballmer about their career paths (subscribe on iTunes here).She has appeared on ABC, Good Morning America, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and CBC, and she has interviewed media personalities such as Megyn Kelly, technology leaders like Fred Wilson, political leaders like John Brennan, and sports star LeBron James. She is a judge for the prestigious Gerald Loeb Awards in business journalism, and has been named one of Min's Rising Stars in Media, as well as Folio's 2017 Top Women in Media.She graduated from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she majored in psychology and advertising.You can read some of her investigative articles here:— Leaked videos reveal the true founding story of Snapchat— The founder who dumped Jared Kushner: Inside the phone call that left the White House star in a fit of rage— The downfall of billion-dollar startup, Fab— How a startup that raised the largest seed round in Silicon Valley history blew itself up before it even launched— The dark side of Facebook, where people lie, cheat, and make millions— A profile of Uber's controversial CEO, Travis Kalanick— The mystery of Jody Sherman, a founder who was driven to suicide and left behind a shocking business disasterDisclosure: Alyson owns bitcoin and Snap. She is also an investor in The Spun, a sports-media startup founded by her husband.