Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi Talks Future, Growth at the Bloomberg Tech Event
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Right now, Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber, sitting down with Tom Giles in conversation live on Bloomberg. Let's listen. News that came out of Uber earlier this week. Thank you, Natalie Leung, for breaking that story about some changes. Upper management. You promoted Andrew McDonald to chief operating officer. You were quick to say you're not going anywhere anytime soon.

You also said in your note something that was a little bit of a little enigmatic to those of us on the outside, that with Mac stepping up, I intend to put focus on our six strategic shifts, spending more time with our tech teams. Tell us about what are the six strategic shifts and why do you need to spend more time with the tech teams? Well, I think if I talked about all six, we'd be here the whole time. But for example, one that we talk about for us is

becoming much more of a company in terms of the lifetime relationship with our customers. And one of the reasons why, actually, I wanted to bring Mac in as president and COO, he's been at Uber longer than I have, for 13 years. He's an incredible

an incredible operator, is that the power we see in the Uber platform continues to increase. What I mean by that is we have a relationship with you on the ride side. A lot of you using Uber to come here, thank you very much. And then our Uber Eats business is almost as large as our Uber Rides business and growing very, very quickly and accelerating, if anything.

looking at a customer right now, the way the business was built, we essentially had a mobility business that Mac ran, a delivery business that Pierre Dimitri ran, did a terrific job. And it was almost like two businesses interacting with you as a customer. And now the focus for us is really moving to

lifetime interaction with a customer looking you not just as an uber customer uber east customer but overall as an uber customer and how do we continue to build that relationship for example the membership program that we've got uber one gives you did you know no delivery fees and discounts on rides we've got 30 million members and people who use multiple products on uber tend to have

you know transact with us much more tend to have much more satisfaction with the product and that's one of the reasons I wanted to get an experienced operating executive to really focus on the overall relationship with a customer rather than you know separate P&Ls I think you said one in five of your customers are using both mobility and delivery it's about now it's closer to a

a third now. So it's increasing steadily. So it's moving in the right direction, right? What do you do to get that number higher and where do you want it to be in, say, three years? Well, listen, we want to get to 50%, and once we get to 50%, I want to go harder than that. And it's about the little interactions every day. For example...

when I got a ride to the office the other day and along the way I was offered a coffee from Phil's to be ready for me along the way to the office, right? And so it's those little interactions that are value add to the consumer. It's like, great, of course I want my coffee

morning coffee and if it can be ready for me right on the way to work, that's awesome. That is also a way to kind of get me to use Uber Eats, for example, if I didn't use it. Now I use Eats all the time. But it's these little interactions powered by AI, powered by personalization, understanding the context of where you're going and there's a coffee shop close by to give you that opportunity. It's those experiences that we have to build more and more, which is one of the reasons now I'm going to work more with the tech teams because, you know, they're the ones building these experiences.

I want to spend a little bit of time talking about your relationship with autonomous vehicles. It's been a, it's up and down for Uber over the years, even preceding your tenure.

You have stakes in a lot of AV companies. You talked recently about wanting to monetize some of those. Can you tell us a little bit, or your equity stakes generally? You didn't specify AVs. But I am curious, have you identified where you want to focus? What do you want to free the cash up? Is it about developing deeper relationships with a select number of AV partners? What's the strategy? So we want to...

essentially support the AV ecosystem and continue to help that ecosystem develop and then AVs penetrate into the marketplace. AV we think represents a safer way of transportation. Ultimately, we think it'll expand the marketplace as it makes kind of safe transportation cities available to everybody. So we're big fans of AV. And generally, we're working with multiple partners in the ecosystem Waymo, for example, in Austin and Atlanta coming up.

Wave, Avry, there are probably 18 partnerships that we have in the AV ecosystem and we want to help these players develop by investing in them in some cases, but really by working with them to bring their product to market. These are technologies that are unbelievably promising, but they've taken billions of dollars to develop and, you know, 10 plus years and

And it's one of those overnight successes that's kind of taken 20 years of development, but it's finally ready to hit market and we want to help the ecosystem get there. Separately, we have large stakes in many companies. Yes.

you know, well over $5 billion that we think we can take some of those stakes and essentially recycle them into additional investments in the AV ecosystem. So over a period of time, we'll get it right. We've got a ton of free cash flow at the company. So one way or the other, you know, the goal is to build up the AV ecosystem around our network. Build up the AV ecosystem. You guys have the UI, for example, that works really well. You have that customer relationship that maybe some of them don't.

So is the idea you really want to kind of concentrate on a fewer number or is it just keep the broad number of AV partners? I mean obviously we want to make sure that we partner with the right players and I'd say safety is the most important area. We want to make sure that they pass with flying colors through our safety case which is actually pretty tough.

But to the extent that the tech is there, the team is there, safety is part of the culture, we want to work with them. So right now, there are a number of promising partners, and you'll probably see the number of partners increase for us. Okay. You mentioned your relationship with Waymo.

We had Sundar last night, asked him about when he's going to be able to take a Waymo from Mountain View all the way up to San Francisco. We're not quite there yet, but there are genuine concerns about the ways that you are both a partner and a competitor to Waymo. What is the conversation like internally and with your board over how you continue to deepen that conversation?

what is a valuable relationship as far as I can tell, but also keep it from becoming something that starts to undermine your business. Well, the relationship with Waymo, I think the press and to some extent investors love to create drama because what the hell?

But the type of relationship that we have with Waymo is very similar, for example, to the type of relationship we'll have with a Starbucks coffee. They're a great partner with Uber Eats. And at the same time, Starbucks wants to have its own app and wants to have interactions directly with the customer. And it isn't an either or, it's an and. So we offer Starbucks on Eats and they compete with us in some ways with a Starbucks coffee.

app and with their loyalty program. And that's fine. That's the way business goes. Same thing with Domino's. Domino's, three years ago, wasn't going to work with the platforms. Now it works with the platforms. And in the same way, and

In San Francisco, yes, we compete with Waymo to get rides here. But in Austin, Atlanta, we absolutely work with them. And what we're seeing in Austin is, frankly, the launch is going better than we expected. Number one is safety, and obviously Waymo's the best at it. And number two is customer love. And our customers are loving our design.

the delight and surprise of getting a Waymo and they're coming back. So I do think that this is going to be, it's not an either or. We're going to be working together. Waymo is developing its own channels and at the same time we can work together very constructively.

As we head toward an increasingly AV future, I know you've been asked about this before, but what are some of the new ways that you're seeking to overcome that challenge of reassuring drivers who are still an incredibly important part of your ecosystem? Very much so. That you have their backs, but we also love these Waymos that have no driver in them. Very much so. So one is growth helps a lot. So our business is growing almost 20% a year.

And on average, we're going to need more drivers on the platform for the next couple of years. And I see that continuing for some period of time. So I think drivers generally on our platform are going to be more busy, are going to have more to do, and the number of drivers on our platform and couriers on our platform is going to grow. That's one. The second, though, is we're putting significant efforts in...

creating more work and earnings opportunities for drivers and couriers, right? We started with driving, we went to delivery, now you can actually shop and there's a sub-segment of couriers, et cetera, who, you know, will,

love their local Walmart, for example, or Albertsons and shop in those stores. Or for Walmart, we deliver those packages. And now we're actually going further where we're developing now what we call Uber AI solutions, where drivers are actually now

labeling, maps, translating, language, looking at AI answers and grading AI answers. So, you know, one way to look at Uber is that we are essentially a transportation platform. We'll help you go anywhere, get anything. Another way to look at Uber is that we are the largest on-demand work platform on earth.

And the first use case for us is actually transportation. And now we're expanding use cases into other use cases. And knowledge work is one of them. So I think as long as we grow, as long as we are,

honest with our drivers and couriers in terms of their expectations, and now expand the number of opportunities to them, I think we'll be more than fine. You're actually getting your drivers, you're encouraging your drivers to help the AI and make it smarter, the AI that's going to ultimately put them out of the job. Yeah, it's going to be a part of our life going forward, and it's good work, and

you know, certainly our drivers are qualified to do it. How much of their time do you find they're spending doing that? I assume this is like in the course of a day's drive. It's very small compared to the overall workload, right? We're doing over

33 million trips a day now in terms of our mainline segments but it's a uber ai solutions is a very very promising segment growth segment for us and i think in five ten years it will be a significant part of the overall opportunities that we're giving to our drivers and couriers uh

I want to talk about Bill Ackman. Sure. His relationship with Uber. It's nice to have an activist who's friendly, as far as I can tell. Tell us about the ways that you are interacting with Bill and how he is...

Encouraging Uber to be better. Yeah, so Bill is one of the legendary investors out there and so I was very happy like I'm a fan of his kind of investing fundamentals long-term Making big bets. So I've always admired bill So when we found out that he was a shareholder is like right on and the cool thing about bill as a shareholder is he uses the product and

He is intensely interested in the product and he's talking to his drivers. So he gives me a lot of feedback and actually a couple of features. For example, he was leaving dinner one night and he wanted to order Ubers for his kids and his parents. And for some technical reasons, we couldn't do that at the time. And we built that feature based on that idea and it's proven to be a really cool feature. So you want the kind of long-term investor experience

that Bill is, but what's cool about it is that he's actually, you know, he's brilliant, but he uses a product and he uses it in a constructive way and we've got a great relationship. - Speaking of relationships with folks on the East Coast,

Silicon Valley has this really interesting relationship with the Trump administration right now, this need to engage, but also recognizing that there are policies that the Trump administration, like any administration, is pursuing that may not work so well for the tech industry.

No taxes on tips, something that's part of the legislation. Yes. Something that you would say you support. Can you talk about kind of the dialogue that you have with the president and what kind of feedback are you giving him on that? What kind of feedback are you giving him on the tax bill more generally? Yeah. So...

One is no taxes on tips is, we think, a terrific piece of legislation. It will, if passed, save our drivers and couriers hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes that they would have otherwise paid. So we are big supporters of that. Have you put a specific number on that over a time period? It's in the hundreds of millions. I don't know the specifics, but it's significant. And we think it's appropriately targeted to...

uh segment of the population that we all want succeed and i've been very supportive of that directly with the president and uh our folks with uh with the staff and i see generally we engage with every administration out there both in on a federal level and on a state level we certainly engage with the trump administration and what i like in terms of what i'm seeing is that it is a pro-growth pro-business

in terms of kind of common business interest administration, and we'll continue to engage with them constructively going forward. There's a lot of rhetoric around immigration and a lot of policies around immigration that have a mixed effect. What's your message to the Trump administration when it comes to

limitations on immigration. You rely on immigrants for both drivers, for your engineers, across the board. Yeah, so I think, and I'm an immigrant, you know, I came here when I was nine years old, so I am absolutely pro-immigration generally for the U.S., but I think there's no question that we should secure our borders. And so I think from that standpoint, we're very supportive. Our drivers are

couriers have been quite supportive of President Trump as well for similar reasons. And I think with immigration, you know, there is a dialogue for us to be had, which is what is the right level of immigration in this country? You know, we select how we qualify, et cetera. That I'm hoping that we get to have that dialogue as a country. And I think that dialogue suffers from kind of the two sides shooting at each other. But I think that

if we can just come together and recognize that this is a largely immigrant nation and immigration done right can benefit society. Done wrong, it can go the other way. So let's just focus on doing it right. Well, for example, and it's not necessarily that we're building a wall

on the northern border, but you on your earnings call talked about the ways that some of this sort of unwillingness to come to the United States because of some of its political stances toward foreign countries starting to affect your business. We've definitely seen

Canadian immigration into the or travel to the US come down from historical levels. The good news for Uber is that we're a global company so to the extent that Canadians are traveling to Europe they use Uber in Canada and they'll be able to use Uber in Europe as well. So for us the effect on the business is changing business mix. But as long as people travel and the global economies are doing well, which they are, we're going to

interact with consumers one way or the other. Have you seen any shifts since you last weighed in on this topic? The biggest one is the Canadian shift and that has, there was a, I'd say initial significant effect and we're seeing some of that continue, not all of it continue. You talked about the consumer sentiment holding up. What have you seen since you last talked to the public about that? Well, I'm not going to update. Obviously, we're

the middle of a quarter but generally we have seen for the past two years and that has continued into last quarter the consumer remains strong we're not seeing any effects in terms of you know lack of confidence etc we look to see if consumers are trading down for example the kind of restaurants that they're eating at or

reducing the size of, let's say, their shopping baskets, we don't see any signal whatsoever. The U.S. consumer and generally the global consumer has remained resilient. And obviously, I'm hoping that continues. I want to take just a couple seconds before I get kicked off. You get, and I get kicked off. I get kicked off, I think. You're staying.

I understand that you are considering Stablecoin as a vehicle for Uber. Talk about where your considerations are and how that might benefit your business. Yeah, we're still in the study phase, I'd say, but I think Stablecoin is one of the...

for me, more interesting instantiations of crypto that has a practical benefit other than crypto is a store of value. You know, obviously you can have your opinions on Bitcoin, but it's a proven commodity and people have different opinions on where it's going. But I do think that stablecoin is quite promising, especially for global companies that are moving money around globally

to create a mechanism for us to essentially reduce costs in terms of moving money internationally. So that's super interesting to us, and we're definitely going to take a look. Taking a look at it closely. Dara, thank you so much for joining us today at Bloomberg Tech. Thank you for having me. We appreciate it. It was great to have you here. Please give me a round of applause. Thank you.

That was Bloomberg Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology, Tom Giles, sitting down with the CEO of Uber, Dara Khashoggi, at the Bloomberg Tech Summit out in San Francisco. Seen and heard live here on Bloomberg TV and radio. Are you still quoting 30-year-old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past.

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