Travis Kalanick officially joins the billionaire club after dumping Uber stock

Travis Kalanick is unloading close to a third of his Uber holdings through the tender offer arranged by SoftBank.

The Uber creator, who stepped down as CEO earlier this year, attempted to offload approximately half of his Uber stake, according to insiders familiar with the situation. However, since an excess of shareholders wanted to cash out, he—like everyone else involved—could only sell 58% of what he intended. This translates to him parting ways with around 29% of his holdings.

A number of additional Uber investors divested significant portions of their stakes, among them Menlo Ventures, which let go of a comparable share of its position to what Kalanick did. Major sellers are also anticipated to feature Kalanick's fellow co-founder Garrett Camp alongside Benchmark, the venture capital outfit that had a public falling out with Kalanick.

Nevertheless, a few other institutional backers in Uber opted against selling, such as Lowercase Capital and Kleiner Perkins.

SoftBank is acquiring 15% of the business from current Uber shareholders including Kalanick, while SoftBank's partner investors are taking on an extra 3% ownership interest.

Before SoftBank's investment, Kalanick held approximately 10% of the company. As recently as this past summer, he had been telling colleagues that he had no intention of divesting any of his shares, though his position grew less clear to those around him in the weeks that followed.

Although he had long been a paper billionaire, Kalanick's actual finances will now swell by $1.4 billion, since each share commands roughly $33 in the SoftBank deal. The latest transaction places Uber's value at $48 billion.

Uber's shareholders pushed him out of the CEO role this past summer, yet Kalanick continues to serve on the company's board. The move to sell his shares will very likely diminish his influence in corporate discussions.

Bloomberg was the first to break the news of Kalanick's stock sale.