Fair.com gets $385M led by Softbank to grow its flexible car ownership model globally

California startup Fair.com is aiming to turn the car market on its head by providing price-friendly, easy options for people to lease vehicles instead of buying them, and today it’s taking the latest, big step in that ambition.

It has raised a huge Series B funding round of $385 million led by Softbank, with participation from Exponential Ventures, Munich Re Venture’s ERGO Fund, G Squared, and CreditEase, to take its business global. Requiring just a drivers license and a credit card (or bank details), Fair provides flexible leasing plans both to everyday users, and to people who use cars for work purposes. For example, it works closely with Uber, which sold Fair its $400 million leasing business earlier this year, to equip its drivers with vehicles.

“The plan is to scale the business ten-fold,” CEO and co-founder Scott Painter said in an interview. Fair is already in 15 states (26 markets) in the US and is adding a new city every week, he continued, leasing cars to more than 20,000 users to date. “Growth has been dramatic over the last year.”

This is the latest in a series of outsized investments Softbank has made across the tech world out of its Vision Fund, and it is a very strategic one. Softbank is already one of the biggest investors in the world in ride-sharing businesses, backing not just Uber but Didi in China, Grab in Southeast Asia, Ola in India, Getaround in the US. (It’s also involved in a number of other automotive and transportation plays such as the food delivery startup Doordash, the car dealer platform Auto1 in Germany, the self-driving company Cruise, mapping startup Mapbox, and many more.)

One long-term plan is to use Fair to help scale those ridesharing businesses by helping connect more drivers with vehicles, as Fair has already done with Uber, by providing a quick way for would-be drivers to get vehicles.

“We think Fair could help unlock ridesharing on a global scale,” said Lydia Jett, an investor with the Softbank Vision Fund. “We’re excited to see how this can add to Softbank’s portfolio and vice versa.”

Painter said Fair had been talking to Softbank for the last year leading up to today. One of the reasons Softbank decided to invest was because of Fair’s ability to turn around Uber’s leasing business.

“Uber became a case to prove out the team,” Jett said. “As an investor, you rarely get to see a singular asset operated by two different teams, and the Fair team was about to do something that Uber was not doing well. They have turned that asset around and proven that this is a tremendous value add.”

Painter would not comment directly on valuation, but he pointed out that this round puts the total raised in equity so far in Fair.com at around $500 million. And from what I understand, Fair’s valuation is now definitely over $1 billion as collectively those equity investors do not control the business.

Alongside the equity investments, Fair has up to now been able to secure up to $1 billion in debt, used to build up its fleet of vehicles. Painter noted to me that this latest equity round will help it grow that debt pot as and when it’s needed to meet demand. “In simple terms, for every dollar in equity we unlock $10 in debt, and we borrow that cash to buy cars.”