Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on self-driving's future, changing business model, job displacement

Uber is positioning itself as the distribution layer for autonomous vehicles rather than betting on a single robotaxi winner. It has more than 20 autonomy partners, including Waymo and China’s Baidu, WeRide and Pony, and will only admit systems meeting its safety and economic thresholds.

Dara Khosrowshahi believes Uber’s existing demand network remains its main moat even when drivers become machines. An autonomous fleet plugged into Uber should get shorter pickups, higher utilization and more revenue per vehicle than a standalone fleet, while human and autonomous cars coexist for years.

Uber expects robotaxi ownership eventually to become a financial asset class rather than something Uber itself must own. Khosrowshahi envisions capital providers resembling Blackstone owning fleets, with Uber temporarily taking balance-sheet risk to prove vehicle economics before those assets are financed and moved off its books.

Uber says it can fund an aggressive autonomy buildout while still returning enormous amounts of capital to shareholders. The company generated more than $8.5 billion of cash flow in the prior 12 months, reported 18% top-line and 35% bottom-line growth, and nevertheless announced a $20 billion buyback.

Tesla remains the conspicuous holdout from Uber’s multi-platform strategy. Khosrowshahi said Tesla currently wants to go alone, while arguing that Tesla robotaxi owners would earn more by also accessing Uber’s demand network; he nevertheless expects multiple autonomous-driving winners.

Uber thinks automation can address roughly half of its delivery market before a harder physical problem appears. Sidewalk robots can handle short dense trips and drones can serve spread-out suburbs, but getting food out of restaurants and into apartments leaves the unresolved first-and-last-mile challenge.

Khosrowshahi expects autonomy to avoid major driver displacement for roughly five to seven years, but not indefinitely. Uber is already reducing driver recruitment where robotaxis launch so existing drivers retain earnings; he said displacement becomes a much harder societal problem over a 10-to-15-year horizon.

Uber increasingly sees itself as a capital-light demand network connecting consumers to other companies’ expensive physical assets. That logic now spans rides, food, groceries and future autonomous fleets, while Uber selectively deploys its own capital where doing so helps build the ecosystem rather than permanently owning the infrastructure.