Uber is losing more than $1 billion a year in China

In this July 10, 2012 file photo, Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick arrives at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

IMAGE: PAUL SAKLUMA/AP PHOTO

BY SETH FIEGERMAN12 HOURS AGO

Uber is racking up tremendous losses in a high-stakes bid to make a dent in China's car-hailing market, its CEO revealed this week.

"We are profitable in the U.S., but in China we’re losing over a billion dollars a year," Travis Kalanick, the CEO and cofounder of Uber, said during an on-stage appearance at Vancouver's Launch Academy on Monday, which we watched later via Periscope.

If that sounds insane, Kalanick claims it's because today's startup market is even more insane. 

"Look, we’re in China where we have a fierce competitor who is raising billions of dollars, but is unprofitable in every city that they exist in," Kalanick says, presumably referring to rival Didi Kuaidi. "The question for us is do we want to exist in China or not, and can we contain the irrational long enough to get to the point where the world does get rational."

You read that right: Uber, the $62.5 billion startup that has come to define the era of sky-high funding and valuations, is upset about the era of exuberant funding and valuations. 

Uber China, a standalone business overseeing its operations in the country, has raised more than $1 billion and is said to be valued at $8 billion. Uber proper has raised more than $8 billion in private funding total.

"I wish the world wasn’t that way," Kalanick added at the event, "because I prefer building verses fundraising."