At $68 Billion Valuation, Uber Will Be Bigger Than GM, Ford, And Honda

It only took Uber five and a half years to surpass the valuation of 107-year-old General Motors .

As Uber plans a $2.1 billion funding round that would bring its total capital raised to almost $10 billion, the ride-hailing app is hoping to fetch a valuation as high as $68 billion. That’s a significant jump from the $52 billion earlier this year, and it also marks a significant milestone: for the first time, Uber is going to leapfrog iconic carmakers General Motors, Ford Motor , and Honda Motor in terms of valuation while almost catching up to other luxury carmakers like Volkswagen and BMW.

The skyrocketing valuation has triggered ongoing debates about whether there’s a bubble in the private fundraising market. Does Uber really deserve a higher valuation than the companies that manufacture and sell the bulk of cars around the world? While skepticism remains, Uber’s latest rounds have attracted powerful backers not only from Internet giants like Baidu but also Wall Street movers such as Tiger Global (which also invested in some of Uber’s biggest competitors in Asia).

(Read more: Uber Wants To Conquer The World, But These Companies Are Fighting Back)

Meanwhile, some on Wall Street saw it as a warning sign for the iconic carmakers. “Google and Uber plan to revolutionize mobility based on a new transportation paradigm. How can GM, a company that is often described as bureaucratic, succeed in a future that is often described as disruptive?” analysts wrote in a recent Deutsche Bank report on the auto industry.