Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi Talks Asia Growth, Robo Taxis

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Well, our next guest runs ride Shair Giant Uber and is visiting Asia seeking new avenues of growth. The company has been successful in many markets in this region, but has also faced regulatory hurdles and local competition. Joining us exclusively now is the uberc of Dara Kosha Shawi rather joining us this morning, Dar. So it's been a very busy week for you today. If you've been Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, what's been this sort of standout so far?

The key takeaways, well, the key takeaways for US is growth the APAC market and in particular the North Asia markets as well. They are huge growth markets for US. And if you look, for example, in the ride share business, over thirty percent of our global first trips coming into the category come from the APAC region. The area is growing very quickly, including taxi as well, which is actually

Early this year, you also put out a statement on the robot taxi push as well, and so the Middle East and Asia were the markets for twenty twenty five to launch, and we've seen of course that initial deployment in the Middle East already. What's happening on the Asia side well, lots.

Of discussions on the Asia side. I think what's really important is to set up a regulatory framework to go forward. For example, Hong Kong has various trials and pilots going on, and in many other markets we're talking to regulators about how we can be a part of shaping ride share and autonomous ride shair going forward. The technology is absolutely getting there.

These are the.

Robot driver doesn't get tired, doesn't get distracted, and we very much look forward to working with various authorities to introduce rod share into the markets. We're now live in four markets now as we speak, in the US and in the Middle East, and I expect to be in ten plus markets by next year, and we want those markets to be in the Asia Pacific region as well.

Where then in Asia do you think is the most likely place.

We'll see I think that certainly Japan has great potential, you know, with.

They behind on their regulation, they are.

Behind in their regulation, but I think that they also understand that with an aging population, there's a real need for transportation, not just in the large cities but in the rural areas. And for example, I experienced that personally going to Kaga City and where we have communal ride share and kind of took a ride share trip and understood what the needs are there. So we're talking with very countries regulatory authorities. I think Japan is going to

Part of it.

Australia, where we were just talking about, is a huge market for us. So we're having those dialogues and I think that the picture will shape up over the next two years because the technology is definitely getting there.

Speaking of Hong Kong, because we do see the trials that are underweight and they're being conducted by Baydu's Apollogo program. Would you be looking to work with them on that or are you working with them on that?

By Do is a partner of ours, So we partner with Baidu. We're an we ride for example in Abu Dhabi and expanding their ponies another partner of ours. So We absolutely expect to be on the road with all three of them. When you look at Chinese autonomous technology and the development there, they are one of the leaders on a global basis, and for us, we want to partner with the whole autonomous ecosystem to bring this technology to reality.

So just to clarify, you're expecting to ramp up the market. So you're into ten autonamous driving markets ten plus yes by next year, and you anticipate that those could also come from the Asia region.

They could come from the Asia region, and they could also involve some of the partners that we talked about.

By do we ride a pony?

And if not Hong Kong, then where else? Do you think? In Japan? As I said, it's really is behind on the regulatory side.

In every major market in which we operate, we are having discussions with autonomous partners and then most importantly regulators as to how we can introduce autonomous either in a pilot way or within some restricted operational domain.

You know, everyone wants this product.

It's a product that's delightful in markets for example, in Atlanta, in Austin and Abu Dhabi.

Our consumers love the product.

They feel safe, and this technology is hitting primetime now and every major city in the world wants to be a part of that revolution.

I do find it interesting on By in particular with the Apollogo program, because they are conducting the trials here. They're already starting to remove the human drivers across some of their markets in mainland Shiner and the way that you can get a buy to apologo ride in mainland China is often through a buy do control platform. Do you see that risk of them maybe pursuing that strategy here instead of teaming up with you on it.

I don't think it's going to be black and white in terms of the strategy. I think that there could be many hybrid approaches, and I compare it to the food delivery business. For example, we work with Starbucks or McDonald's that has a direct app, and customers.

Go direct to get the food there.

At the same time they also participate in the marketplace. So I think the autonomous ecosystem will be the same way. There will be some kind of some customers going direct, and we think that with the Uber marketplace, we can bring the kind of demand that over two hundred million monthly active platform customers can bring to autonomous so that we get those cars on the road and incredibly busy with very high utilization.

Let's talk about the US as well, because you're partnering there with Weimo as well in certain cities. Perfect partner, Yeah, terrific partnering. Actually in the latest earnings I think you said excellent as well. But in some places Weimo is expanding into new cities without you and becoming a direct competitor. And that's something that was highlighted even by web Bush earlier this week as being a potential risk for your business next year.

How are you assessing that Well, I think it's the same example that I gave you that in some ways the McDonald's app is a competitor to Uber eats and the two can co exist.

And it's very very early.

In the development of autonomous we have to make sure that we have access to autonomous technology in the major cities that have the right regulatory framework to allow autonomous and we're very confident as we look at our roadmap and we look at our partners, we have over twenty partners autonomous partners globally that we will have access to autonomous technologies in the large cities and markets that really count.

When you say access to twenty different partners, do you think that that is the way that the industry will continue to evolve or do you expect consolidation on the robotaxi side as well or the autonomous driving software side.

We're seeing is this is a trillion dollar plus market in terms of autonomous mobility. I think delivery eventually will be of a similar size. And when you have markets that are that large, you usually don't have winner take calls. It's the same way with these LLM models. There are many to choose from, whether it's an open AI or Gemini, and I think the same will be true of autonomous It's an exciting technology, but there are many players getting

Part of the strength of Uber, of course is your data mode and just how much information you're collecting on users and in the rise they're taking in their behavior patterns. But other competitors in the market like way more like tests are still continuing to build up that infrastructure as well. So how secure do you see that data mode being well.

There's nothing secure about the technology space. There's always innovation, and so we just have to move fast and isa ashulely, the more important factor in Uber is our global coverage. We operate in seventy countries, the demand that we're bringing every day, We've got millions of consumers opening our app all over the world, and we can point that demand not just to our current driver partners and delivery partners, but as autonomous comes in to autonomous partners.

You know, these are very.

Expensive cars, it's a very expensive technology, and you want to amortize the upfront spen against as many transactions as possible. And Uber certainly is though leader around the world in terms of the demand that we can point to our autonomous partners.

Yeah, when you talk about capital and just general capital raising plan, an interesting move that you made earlier this year was raising one point two billion dollars by selling those exchange the senior bonds linked to your stake in Aurora. A few details in that one, but do you see yourself doing that again in twenty twenty six something similar again just to it was really seen as an innovative and creative way, I guess to raise money.

Well, we have a very creative team. I think the good news for us is we're now free cash flowing close to ten billion dollars, and we expect that to increase substantially over the next couple of years. So through a combination of the substantial free cashow that we have and also monetizing some of the equity stakes that we have in other companies. Now it's over ten billion dollars.

We can continue to be a leader in the space.

You're well capitalized. That's sort of taking away from that, But would you look to do something similar with your stakes in d D and GRAB in particular.

I think we'll be opportunistic.

Certainly, we love GRAB and it's a strategic partner of ours. D D of course hasn't gone public yet, so to the extent we have an opportunity, we will look to. You know, we call it recycling the investments that we've made. But at the same time, we don't need to do that because the company continues to.

Throw off cash flow. We have a lot of options ahead of us.

I want to talk about also the sparsa geography's strategy and the importance of that. Can you maybe spell it out a little bit for people exactly what you mean by that, because it is interesting as you make sort of a push into lots of different centers, it actually seems to be less the urban centers that are doing well for you as a company.

Well, the urban centers continue to grow, but I do think that we as I reflect on Uber's growth, we used to be a big city company, and what we're seeing is there's enormous demand for both mobility and delivery outside of the large cities and the most sparse markets, the suburbs, et cetera. And our growth in the sparse markets is anywhere from two to three times faster for mobility and delivery than in the big urban markets, even though the urban markets are growing at the same time.

He delivers for Uber Eats. He's a part of.

Our ecosystem and it's amazing to see that happen not just in the big cities, but also in a lot of small cities and rural destinations.

What do you make then for India in particular, because of course you'd be competitive there is rapid of and then they've been very successful with a slightly different operating model, but including going down into the lower tier or solar tier cities. How do you also stay competitive there and does that sparse a geography strategy also fit for India?

Yeah, very much so.

So with India really the fastest growing part of the Indian market is two wheelers and three wheelers, and the business model is different. Actually it's not a commission model, but it's actually subscript model as well. Rappido's a real upstart there, but over the past months we've been pushing back against them and India continues to be a hugely promising market for us, so we're very happy about the recent results that we're seeing.

Dara, thank you much for joining us this morning. That was Dara Costrachahi there, the CEO at Uber in an exclusive interview