Uber Ditches Its Asset-Light Playbook With a $10B Robotaxi Gamble

UberUBER

let go of the wheel — now it’s running after the ride. The ride-hailing platform is moving past the asset-light model that built it, lining up $10B+ in investments and vehicle deals to secure a foothold in an autonomous future it once stepped away from. After offloading its self-driving unit for $4B in 2020, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is now putting more than twice that behind third-party robotaxi players.

• Uber’s shares have fallen ~23% over the past six months as investors worry that Waymo, TeslaTSLA
  , and others will cut the middleman out entirely.
• Waymo already holds ~16% share in San Francisco vs Uber’s 62%, and JPMorgan expects it to capture ~7% of the entire US rideshare market by 2030.

The balancing act: LightShed’s Walter Piecyk called the spending spree “step one in a narrative reset” for Uber, while BNP Paribas analyst Nick Jones questioned why the market wouldn’t eventually go direct to consumers. Still, Khosrowshahi is betting on a “financialized” robotaxi model backed by institutional capital, with Uber monetizing data and services — a move that could either cement control or expose how little it actually has.