Lance Armstrong says his investment in Uber ‘saved our family’

After Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace cost him millions of dollars in lost endorsements and lawsuit settlements, one thing kept him on his feet: his investment in Uber.

“It’s saved our family,” Armstrong told CNBC’s Andrew Sorkin in an interview aired on Thursday. In 2009, the former pro cyclist invested $100,000 in Chris Sacca’s nascent venture capital firm, Lowercase Capital. Armstrong said the bulk of the money went to Uber, which at the time was valued at just $3.7 million. Today, as the company prepares for its IPO, banks have valued Uber at as much as $120 billion.

At the time he invested in Sacca’s firm, Armstrong said, “I didn’t even know that he did Uber. I thought he was buying up a bunch of Twitter shares from employees or former employees, and the biggest investment in [the] Lowercase fund one was Uber.”