Micromobility company Lime raised $167 million in its IPO, ending a nearly decade-long run as a private company that saw wild swings in valuation as it navigated several major hype cycles and a global pandemic.
The nine-year-old scooter and bike company, which is backed by Uber, sold 6.68 million shares at $25 each, at the midpoint of its price range of $24 to $26. Shares began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker ‘LIME’ on Wednesday afternoon, jumping about 9% in the first hour.
The much-anticipated IPO values Lime at about $1.66 billion, slightly less than what fellow micromobility company Bird was valued at when it merged with a special-purpose buyout firm in 2021.
“Having that endurance and patience and faith and optimism that we will get through the hardest times [has] It really paid dividends in the long run because there were a lot of days, weeks, months where I wasn’t sure if Lime was going to make it through the next three months, four months,” CEO Wayne Ting told TechCrunch in an interview on Wednesday.
Lime has been considering an IPO for years. In 2021, after a $523 million funding round, CEO Wayne Ting told TechCrunch that the company was eyeing an IPO in 2022. He reiterated the idea in 2023, saying Lime was still waiting for the right market conditions.
Ultimately, however, Ting said he only wanted to go public when he could prove to the market that Lime was a much more resilient company than a company like Bird.
“We felt we had to show that we were going to be a self-sustaining, profitable, free cash flow positive business and that’s just in the last three years, [where] we’ve had three years of positive free cash flow results,” he said, adding: “I think the timing is right, because the business is strong. We still have a lot of growth ahead of us.”
Lime needs the funds. In its May IPO filing, the company expressed “substantial doubt” that it could continue as a going concern. Lime said it needs the proceeds from the IPO to help resolve about $1 billion in liabilities, more than half of which is due by the end of this year, although some of that debt is convertible. Without an IPO, Lime told prospective investors, it will have to find other sources of funding.
Lime has this financial advantage because the micromobility industry has proven to be quite brutal in recent years, even in the good times. Bird had to file for bankruptcy and restructuring after it launched, and other competitors have either merged (Tier and Dott), delisted (Micromobility.com), or gone out of business altogether (Superpedestrian).
Amid the chaos, Lime has managed to improve its revenue in recent years. It generated $521 million in 2023, $686.6 million in 2024 and $886.7 million last year. The company also reduced its losses from $122.3 million in 2023 to just $33.9 million in 2024, although that figure increased in 2025 to $59.3 million. (The company reported adjusted gross profit in 2025 of more than $400 million, when discounting costs such as depreciation.)
This growth has largely come from Lime’s ability to scale globally. It now operates in 230 cities in 29 countries. But the company is also somewhat dependent on Uber, which owns 24 percent of Lime and accounted for more than 14 percent of its revenue last year. (Uber allows users to book rides with Lime through its app in certain cities.)
Ting said Lime’s focus on reducing unit costs, as well as its ability to use software and machine learning to manage operations from city to city, are what have helped Lime create a more financially viable business. And he said he only expects those advantages to improve now that Lime has access to the public markets.
“It’s more capital for us to invest in growing and expanding Lime, investing in our technology. I feel like a lot of the advantages that we have as the only niche operator, the only profitable operator, will be enhanced now that we’re public,” he said. “It’s a real game of inches, and we’re constantly looking for that 1%, 2% improvement.”
Ting also said he believes being a public company will encourage more cities to partner with Lime.
“I know a lot of cities don’t like the fact that sometimes they bring an operator into the market and that operator will be out of business in six to 12 months. They want a long-term sustainable partnership, and now that we’re public, our finances are available to any city regulator who wants to decide who’s going to be a good long-term partner,” he said.
This story has been updated with information about Lime stock starting to trade and from an interview with CEO Wayne Ting.
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