BONUS: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi Talks Robotaxis & Booking Outlook

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0:37Ed Ludlow:Let's take another look at shares of Uber down. About 6%, I think that's on track for its biggest drop since November. The company said gross bookings for the current quarter are expected to be between$58.25 billion and$60.25 billion. But that figure includes rides and delivery bookings, as well as driver and merchant earnings. Uber said it faces some international headwinds, particularly in Brazil. And the next focus, RoboTaxi. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is back with us here on Bloomberg Tech. You know, the gross bookings outlook, like there's a number of stories within it. I'd also note like at the same time, rider activity seems to be increasing.

1:18Ed Ludlow:You know, help us understand those two data points. Yeah, the gross bookings results that we had up 22 percent in the quarter, were actually very healthy and represented quarter-on-quarter acceleration. Mobility business was stable at 20%. The delivery business actually accelerated quarter-on-quarter as well. So the business continues to grow at pretty extraordinary rates at the scale. We're doing over 300 million trips per week. It drove really strong profitability as well. The pressure that we talked about was really in Brazil, which caused a trip slowdown for the quarter. And that was actually about competition in the food delivery space.

2:06In Brazil, actually, we have a lot of mobility ridership that are two-wheelers. We actually don't engage in the food delivery space. But there's a big war going on in food delivery, and that took away some of our two-wheeler drivers from mobility to delivery because they're getting paid a lot to engage in that war. It really has no effect on us whatsoever. So the guidance that we gave for forward gross bookings growth is very consistent with the guidance that we gave last quarter. And hopefully we will meet and hopefully beat those kinds of expectations.

2:42Ed Ludlow:Dory, is there anything to discuss on both the health and behavior of the consumer that you're seeing going into the second half of this year? All signs point to a healthy consumer. We look at both our mobility and delivery business in terms of the growth of those businesses. They continue to be healthy. We look at other indications. Are consumers trading down and eating at more affordable restaurants? Or are eaters leaving less tips? Eaters or riders leaving less tips? We don't see any signs whatsoever of a consumer slowdown. So the consumer remains strong. And then on the labor front, actually, our driver earnings, we've got over 10 million now earners around the world that continues to be very healthy.

3:32And in the U.S., for example, driver earnings are up 8 % on a year on year basis. So, you know, people talk about the K-shaped economy, but we think both sides of the K continue to be very healthy. And right now, all signs point to the same going forward.

3:49Ed Ludlow:Let's take the driver out of it for a moment and talk about robo taxis. You kind of explained the plan for the rest of the year, which is to get into more cities through different partnerships and different lanes, different methods. Let's start with that. You know, are you wanting to see the team accelerate a bit on that deployment, Dara? Yeah, definitely. So we're in seven cities already with a number of partners. And just to review, we want to work with all of the ecosystem partners. And just like we want every safe driver, human driver on our platform, we want every safe robot driver on our platform.

4:24And we're working with the entire ecosystem to accomplish that. We're in seven markets now. By the end of the year, we'll be in 15 markets and we're on track to be on 15 markets. And we see a lot of advancements as it relates to our partners. I know you're going to have Aisha from Zooxon. They got a great approval from the NHTSA to run their really, really innovative and cool robot vehicles as well. We got approval for Wave to start testing operations in London as well. Nvidia, who is a huge partner of ours, announced the release of their Alpamea 2 model, which is a physical AI model as well. So the ecosystem around AV continues to move forward, is actually accelerating, and we are helping that ecosystem accelerate through our partnership, through investment, through data collect for a number of these partners, and then ultimately commercialization of these vehicles on the road in the cities in which we live.

5:31Ed Ludlow:Dara, on Zoox, and I'll ask Aisha this, obviously, but now they can charge a fare, which is a first for a true rover taxi, no driver controls. When does that manifest on the Uber app? When will Zoox be available on an Uber app in whichever city with a fare associated with it? We think later this year, actually, in Las Vegas, and then we'll expand from there. And Zoox's strategy is going to be to make their vehicles available on Uber as well as on the Zoox app as well. So we're very, very excited to work with that. A lot of people want to understand what's happening in the relationship with Waymo.

6:06Ed Ludlow:There was a change of plans in Phoenix, but how confident are you also about sort of renewing non-exclusive contracts with Waymo? I think that your agreements with them, for example, in Austin, Atlanta run through 2028. and then you've got to work out how to go from there. Yes. So the deployment in Phoenix was a really small deployment. It was less than 10 cars. So that's not material in any way, shape or form. We're going to continue to work with Waymo. It's been a strong partnership going forward into 28 as well. And our philosophy has always been we don't want to be dependent on one partner one way or the other.

6:47Of course, we'd love to continue the relationship with Waymo. But then you've got partners like Zoox, Wave, WeRide, AvRide, and then, of course, NVIDIA as well, so that we're not dependent on any single player to keep driving and growing this ecosystem.

7:06Ed Ludlow:By the way, Dara, we're live on Bloomberg Television and on Bloomberg Radio. And this is Bloomberg Tech speaking to Uber's CEO. And you've just said that you don't want to rely on any one partner. let me put it a different way. If we accept that Waymo is kind of the commercial robo-taxi leader in the US, at least in terms of deployments, charging affair of the rest of the field, which do you think is most competitive or going to be most competitive against Waymo? I think, I think there are going to be multiple winners. I mean, this market is so early in its development and, and I compare it to like the foundation model space.

7:40You remember like three years ago or two years ago, people were like, OpenAI is going to run away with it. They're going to be the only game in town. Then it turned into Anthropic and Claude is the best model that's going to conquer them all. Now you see XAI and SpaceX AI coming in with Grok and the combination with Cursor being a really great combination as well. You've got Google coming in with Gemini. They were late in the game, but they're definitely in the game. Nvidia releasing open source and really supporting that ecosystem. So there is going to be no single winner here. Waymo's in the lead now, just like OpenAI was in the lead, but there are going to be many, many players as part of this ecosystem.

8:27And we will help the ecosystem overall commercialize because ultimately we've got the demand and we can bring more rides to those cars and monetize those vehicles in a way that no one else can.

8:39Ed Ludlow:So Dara, really quick to drive early adoption, is it important that the robotaxi firms price lower than other ride share? No, actually, what we're seeing is pricing is super strong and demand is super strong as well. So when you get the product in market, it sells. It's taken a long time, right? Like 20 % of search now is driven by AI. AV is less than 0.5 % of overall trips at this point. So the adoption is going to take time, but the product is a terrific product. And we look forward to making it available on the Uber app really all over the world. The Bloomberg This Weekend Podcast, news, politics, and the lighter side of Bloomberg.

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