Micromobility company Lime has raised $167 million in its IPO, ending a nearly decade-long run as a private company that saw wild valuation swings 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, in the middle of its price range of $24 to $26. Shares began trading on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker “LIME” on Wednesday afternoon, jumping about 9% in the first hour.
The long-awaited IPO pegs Lime’s valuation at about $1.66 billion, just shy of the price that fellow micro-mobility company Bird got when it merged with a special-purpose buyout company in 2021.
“Having the resilience and patience and faith and optimism that we will get through the toughest moments [has] really paid dividends in the long run because there were many 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 Wednesday. “To be here today as a public company feels incredibly rewarding, and it took a lot, a lot of heart, sweat and tears to get to this point.”
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 reheated the idea in 2023, saying Lime was still waiting for the right market conditions.
Ultimately, however, Ting said he only wanted to go public once he could prove to the market that Lime was a far more sustainable company than one like Bird.
“We felt we needed to demonstrate that we were going to be a self-sustaining, profitable, free cash flow positive business, and that only happened over the last three years, [where] we had three years of positive free cash flow results,” he said. “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 IPO in May, the company expressed “substantial doubt” that it could continue as a going concern. Lime said it needs the IPO proceeds to help address 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 potential investors, it would be necessary to find other sources of financing.
Lime is riding on the financial advantage because the micromobility industry has proven to be quite brutal over the past few years, even in the good times. Bird had to file for bankruptcy protection and restructuring after it went public, and other competitors have either merged (Tier and Dott), been delisted from major exchanges (Micromobility.com), or gone out of business altogether (Superpedestrian).
Amid the chaos, Lime has managed to improve its revenue over the past few 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 number increased again in 2025 to $59.3 million. (The company reported adjusted gross profit in 2025 of more than $400 million when costs like depreciation were discounted.)
That 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% of Lime and accounted for more than 14% of revenue last year. (Uber allows people to book Lime rides through its app in some cities.)
Ting said Lime’s focus on reducing unit costs, plus its ability to use software and machine learning to manage city-by-city operations, is what helped Lime create a more financially sustainable business. And he said he expects those benefits to only improve now that Lime has access to the public markets.
“It’s more capital for us to invest in the growth and expansion of Lime, in investing back into our technology. I feel like a lot of the advantages that we have in being the only capable operator, the only profitable operator, are only going to be greater now that we’re public,” he said. “It’s a real turn of the inch business 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 would bring an operator into the market and the 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’s stock starting to trade and from an interview with CEO Wayne Ting.
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