The Silicon Valley drag race is heating up.
Lyft, the No. 2 ride-hailing app, is looking to raise $500 million as it revs up the competition with Uber, its larger and better-financed rival, The Post has learned.
The fast-growing Lyft is being valued at $2 billion going into the money raise, according to documents reviewed by The Post.
That’s more than double the $850 million value it had last year after completing a $250 million fundraising round, the documents show.
The rising valuation likely reflects Lyft’s revenue growth, which is running at 40 percent quarter over quarter, the documents reveal.
The $2 billion valuation is before the funding closes, so it’s likely to jump considerably after the company raises the money, according to one investor.
Like Uber, Lyft is a private, venture-backed company and doesn’t release financials.
The 3-year-old San Francisco company has raised $332.5 million so far in six rounds of funding from investors — including venture-capital fund Andreessen Horowitz and the Chinese online retailer Alibaba, according to CrunchBase.
Lyft, which has its drivers display glowing pink mustaches in their cars, has been locked into a battle for passenger dollars with Uber.
So far, Uber has dominated the mobile ride-hailing business and is a venture-capital darling. After raising $1.2 billion in December, Uber is valued at a staggering $40 billion.
And last month, the company raised another $1.6 billion in convertible debt from Goldman Sachs’ wealth management clients, and was in talks to raise another $600 million to add to the December funding, according to Bloomberg.
But Uber, which is distinguished by its sleek black-and-silver app, has alienated users and investors during its rampant growth.
Uber’s “surge pricing” function, which charges more during peak hours or inclement weather, has been criticized by irked users who have paid multiples of their cab fares during those periods.
The policy caught so much flak that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman got the company in July to cap its surge pricing.
So heated is the rivalry that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick admitted in a Vanity Fair interview that he tried to mess with Lyft’s earlier fundraising efforts by competing for investors.
Uber has also faced heat after an executive, Emil Michael, suggested digging up dirt on journalists and other critics of the company in November.
Kalanick has apologized for Michael’s comments.
The flap has hardly put the brakes on Uber’s growth.
While Uber has expanded into 262 cities — including far-flung places such as Nairobi, Kenya, and Tulsa, Oklahoma — Lyft operates in just 60 markets, including Philadelphia, where it recently set up shop, according to its website.
In fact, Lyft only launched in New York in July — long after Uber.
Lyft is seeking to expand to 100 cities this year, CEO John Zimmer told CNBC last year.