Ridesharing startup Uber, Inc. has raised a staggering new private equity round of $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

According to The New York Times the new round was raised at a valuation of $62.5 billion.

As part of the deal, Public Investment Fund Managing Director Yasir Al Rumayyan will take a seat on Uber’s board.

The money is said to be in part due to Uber’s interest in expanding its services in the Middle East, a market which the company had previously committed $250 million towards growing, whereas for Saudi Arabia the investment is part of the country’s “Vision 2030” push to become less reliant on oil, and perhaps more bizarrely given they are not allowed to legally drive within its borders, to bring more women into the workforce.

Uber currently operates in 15 cities and nine countries in the region as is believed to have around 395,000 active riders and 19,000 drivers per month.

Battle

The news of new funding for Uber comes at a time Uber’s rivals themselves are also upping their funding: Lyft, Inc. raised $500 million from General Motors Corp in January, and China’s Didi Chuxing took a surprising $1 billion from Apple, Inc. in March.

Didi, along with Lyft and Uber rivals Ola (India) and Grab (South East Asia) are also working together to provide interopability between their apps for people who travel across the United States and Asia, a partnership first announced in December that is only now being properly implemented with the announcement that Grab users can now book Lyft vehicles in the United States.

Uber is in a battle for market supremacy and that battle requires an epic amount of funding; Uber recruits drivers in new territories through sign on bonuses and by offering discounted vehicle leasing, and when that’s scaled out to millions of Uber drivers, it’s not that surprising that the money is flowing out the door at an historic rate.

That said, it’s still a staggering amount of money, and success is not guaranteed; as SiliconANGLE’s John Furrier wrote back in January Uber could be the next Webvan, Inc., a company that was considered a poster child for the excess of the first great tech bubble, that was also one of the first company to fall when the bubble burst.

Including the new fund Uber has raised a record breaking $14.11 billion to date.

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