Waymo just raised $16 billion and announced expansion to 20+ cities. They’re doing over 450,000 fully autonomous rides per week - no safety driver, no supervision. And they’re increasingly bypassing Uber entirely, launching via their own app in Miami, DC, and Dallas.
This is the existential question hanging over Uber’s stock, which is down 25% since October despite record results. Revenue hit $14.4 billion. Free cash flow was $2.8 billion. 200 million monthly users. None of it matters if robotaxis make the whole model obsolete.
Uber’s response? If you can’t beat them, dispatch them. The company has signed 20 AV partnerships and says it’ll offer robotaxi rides in 10+ countries by late 2026. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is betting Uber becomes the platform layer - the app you open regardless of whether a human or robot shows up.
Platform or roadkill?
Here's how the community voted
The platform play is working - Uber has 20 AV partnerships including Waymo, Nvidia, Lucid, and Nuro. In Austin, Waymo handles 20% of Uber rides in its service area with just 100 vehicles. Uber doesn’t need to build robotaxis - it just needs to dispatch them.
The core business is a cash machine - $2.8B free cash flow in Q4 alone. 200M monthly users. 3.8B trips last quarter. Profitable, growing, and throwing off cash while the robotaxi debate plays out.
The stock is pricing in disaster - Down 25% since October despite record results. P/E of ~15 for a company growing revenue 20%+ and expanding into new verticals. If the robotaxi threat takes years to materialize, this is a bargain.
Waymo is already pulling away - 450K+ rides per week, expanding to 20+ cities in 2026, and launching via its own app in Miami, DC, and Dallas - bypassing Uber entirely. The “partnership” is cooling fast. Waymo may not need Uber at all.
Tesla is the wild card - Musk’s vision is millions of Tesla owners renting their cars as robotaxis through Tesla’s app. He’s missed every FSD deadline since 2016, but if it ever works, Uber’s model breaks.
40% of bookings are at risk - Analysts estimate nearly half of Uber’s mobility business could be disrupted by AVs. Even if Uber survives, the transition could crush margins as they compete with vertically integrated rivals.
The platform play is working - Uber has 20 AV partnerships including Waymo, Nvidia, Lucid, and Nuro. In Austin, Waymo handles 20% of Uber rides in its service area with just 100 vehicles. Uber doesn’t need to build robotaxis - it just needs to dispatch them.
The core business is a cash machine - $2.8B free cash flow in Q4 alone. 200M monthly users. 3.8B trips last quarter. Profitable, growing, and throwing off cash while the robotaxi debate plays out.
The stock is pricing in disaster - Down 25% since October despite record results. P/E of ~15 for a company growing revenue 20%+ and expanding into new verticals. If the robotaxi threat takes years to materialize, this is a bargain.
Waymo is already pulling away - 450K+ rides per week, expanding to 20+ cities in 2026, and launching via its own app in Miami, DC, and Dallas - bypassing Uber entirely. The “partnership” is cooling fast. Waymo may not need Uber at all.
Tesla is the wild card - Musk’s vision is millions of Tesla owners renting their cars as robotaxis through Tesla’s app. He’s missed every FSD deadline since 2016, but if it ever works, Uber’s model breaks.
40% of bookings are at risk - Analysts estimate nearly half of Uber’s mobility business could be disrupted by AVs. Even if Uber survives, the transition could crush margins as they compete with vertically integrated rivals.
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A bit torn on Uber. I think a good business at an attractive valuation right now. Problem is Waymo are so far ahead of anyone on AV it seems, and for sure it looks like they can just replace a lot of what Uber does. There's no doubt in my mind AV's will have a huge impact on how people get from A to B in the developed world.
On the other hand though, you'd anticipate this kind of technology to get commoditized at some point? In my mind it's a question of how far Waymo can go before that happens. Given the current valuation though, and some of the additional moat that Uber have built (e.g food delivery), I think Uber is worth a punt.
Long term dud. The changes going on with AVs and drones pose a real risk to Uber. If they do not materialize, however, there is another change that will eventually come, and I'm not sure who wins. The cost of delivery services is too high today, in my humble opinion, and I think it can be greatly improved with better logistics and enforcing a time of delivery by the restaurant and receiver for routing. For example, if there are 10 restaurants in 1 block, there can be a delivery to a specific neighborhood from all 10 of those during peak hours. The car leaves at a specific time, arrives at a specific time, and the delivery cost can come down dramatically because you didn't force a car with a driver to take 1 pizza box from point A to point B, but maybe 5 pizza boxes, sharing the cost more widely. Railroads went through this and called it PSR, and it made a positive impact in terms of on-time deliveries and managing costs/margins and making it accessible (vs. trucking alternatives) to more and more use cases.
I don't think either Lyft, Uber, or others have really tackled this and in countries with a high labor cost, I think they should have already begun such initiatives to bring the cost per delivery down.
But all that effort is pointless if they get derailed by drones. A drone is inherently more able to do point A to point B deliveries, in part limited by what it can carry, and it does not have (eventually) as much labor cost as a car. Drones can also be owned by the vendor.
Transportation businesses, like Uber and Lyft, are just too difficult to make a call on, but I think the deck is stacked against them right now. At best, it gets a "pass" from me, but I'm also just not interested in things with so much long-term existential risk. I might be more tempted if I saw one of them making leaps on efficiency via logistics, getting costs down further than other options though.