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Indiana University is proving how higher education can create solutions with industry. We're working side by side with industry partners to fuel economic growth that powers a future ready workforce. Explore IU's impact at iu.edu impact.
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Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News well, our next guest runs rideshare giant Uber and is visiting Asia seeking new avenues of growth. The company's been successful in many months markets in this region, but has also faced regulatory hurdles and local competition. Joining us exclusively now is the Uber CEO Dara Kosha Khashowi Rather joining us this morning. Dara, so it's been a very busy week for you being Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong. What's been the sort of standout so far? The key takeaways?
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Well, the key takeaways for us is growth, the APEC 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 rideshare business, over 30% of our global first trips coming into the category come from the APEC region. The area is growing very quickly, including taxi as well, which is actually one of our newest products on the platform. So for me coming here, seeing the teams meeting with local business people and regulators and talking about how we can be part of the future growth the region is really what my agenda is early this year.
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You also put out a statement on on the robotaxi push as well. And so the Middle east and and Asia were the markets for 2025 launch and we've seen of course that initial deployment in the Middle east already. What's happening on the Asia side?
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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 reg how we can be a part of shaping rideshare and autonomous rideshare 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 rideshare 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 10 plus markets by next year and we want those markets to be in the Asia Pacific region as well.
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Where then in Asia do you think is the most likely place we'll see?
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I think that certainly Japan has great potential, you know, with behind on their regulation. They are behind on 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 Acoga city and where we have communal rideshare and kind of took a ride share trip and understood what the needs are there. So we're talking with various countries, regulatory authorities. I think Japan is going to be part of it. I certainly hope that Hong Kong is going to be a 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, the picture will shape up over the next two years because the technology is definitely getting there.
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Speaking of Hong Kong, because we do see the trials that are underway and being conducted by, by Baidu's Apollo Go program. Would you be looking to work with them on that or are you working with them on that?
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Baidu is a partner of ours, so we partner with Baidu where we ride, for example, in Abu Dhabi and expanding their pony is 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 WHO autonomous ecosystem to bring this technology to reality.
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So just to clarify, you're expecting to ramp up the markets that you're into? 10 autonomous driving markets, 10 plus.
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Yes.
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By next year. And you anticipate that those could also come from the Asia region?
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They could come from the Asia region and they could also involve some of the partners that we talked about. Baidu, we ride and pony.
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Mm. And where, if not Hong Kong, then where else do you think? And Japan, as I said, it's really is behind on the regulatory side.
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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 in 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.
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I do find it interesting, interesting on Baidu in particular with the Apollo program, because they are conducting the trials here. They're already starting to remove the human drivers across some of their markets in mainland China. And the way that you can get a Baidu Apollo Go ride in mainland China is often through a Baidu control platform. Do you see that risk of them maybe pursuing that strategy here instead of teaming up with you on it?
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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 you know, 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 direct, kind of some customers going direct. And we think that with the Uber marketplace we can bring the kind of demand that over 200 million monthly active platforms, platform customers can bring to autonomous so that we get those cars on the road and incredibly busy with very high utilization.
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Let's talk about the US as well, because you're partnering there with, with Waymo as well in certain cities.
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Terrific partner.
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Yeah, terrific partner. Actually in the latest earnings, I think you said excellent as well. But in some places Waymo is expanding into new cities without you and becoming a direct competitor. And that's something that was highlighted even by, by wedbush early this week as being a potential risk for your business next year. How are you assessing that?
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Well, I think it's, 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 coexist. 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 frameworks to allow autonomous. And we're very confident as we look at a roadmap and we look at our partners. We have over 20 partners, autonomous partners globally, that we will have access to autonomous technologies in the large cities and markets that really count.
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When you say access to 20 different partners, do you think that that is the way that the industry will continue to evolve or do you expect consolidation on, on the robotaxi side as well, or the autonomous driving software side?
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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 OpenAI or Gemini. And I think the same will be true of Autonomous. It's an Exciting technology, but there are many players getting to the finish line. We just have to make sure that the players that we work with are safe and that again, we're working with the regulators in a constructive manner.
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Part of the strength of Uber, of course, is, is your data mode and just how much information you're collecting on users and the rides they're taking in, their behavioral patterns. But, but other competitors in the market, like Waymo, like Tesla, are still continuing to build up that infrastructure as well. So how secure do you see that data being?
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Well, there's nothing secure about the technology space. There's always innovation. There's. And so we just have to move fast. And I say actually that the more important factor in Uber is our global coverage. We operate in 70 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 spend against as many transactions as possible. And Uber certainly is the leader around the world in terms of the demand that we can point to our autonomous partners.
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Yeah. When you talk about capital and just general capital raising plans, something. An interesting move that you made earlier this year was raising $1.2 billion by selling those exchangeable senior bonds linked to your stake in Aurora. A few details on that one. But do you see yourself doing that again in 2026? Something just to. To. It was really seen as an innovative and creative way, I guess, to raise money.
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Well, we, we have a very creative team. I think the good news for us is we're. We're now free cash flowing close to $10 billion and we expect that to, to increase substantially over the next couple of years. So through a combination of the substantial free cash flow that we have and also monetizing some of the equity stakes that we have in other companies now it's over $10 billion. We think we have plenty of capital to be able to continue to invest in our autonomous technology partners or building out a fleet presence and or vehicles across the autonomous ecosystem so that we can continue to be a leader in the space.
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You're well capitalized. That's what I'm taking away from that. But, but would you look to do something similar with your stakes in, in Didi and Grab in particular?
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I think we'll be opportunistic, certainly. We, we love Grab. And it's a strategic partner. Didi, 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.
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Want to talk about also the sparse geographies 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 be less the urban centers that are doing well for you as a company.
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Well, the urban centers continue to grow. But. 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, in the more sparse markets, the suburbs, etc. 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. Some governments actually need access to mobility. You know, there isn't great taxi service in some of these rural destinations in Japan. Bus services is also not readily available. So, you know, as Uber, obviously we run a business, but we want to be there for our stakeholders and we want to help address some of the needs of the government. In Japan in particular, rural transportation is a real need and we wanted to step up and give back to Japanese society because that market has been such a great market for us. And that's what communal rideshare in these rural destinations like Kaga City is all about. I experienced it myself. The countryside is absolutely beautiful and you know, our driver was so thankful. He actually runs a soba shop that's on Uber Eats as well. 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.
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What do you make then for. For India in particular because of course your big competitor there is Rapido and they've been very successful with a slightly different operating model, but including going down into to lower tier or smaller tier cities, how do you also stay competitive there? And does that sparse geography strategy also fit for India?
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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 subscription model as well. Rapido is 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, results that we're seeing.
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Dara, thank you for joining us this morning. That was Dara Khosrow there, the CEO at Uber, in an exclusive interview. Bloomberg Daybreak is your best way to get informed first thing in the morning, right in your podcast feed. Hi, I'm Karen Moscow.
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And I'm Nathan Hager. Each morning we're up early putting together the latest episode of Bloomberg Daybreak US Edition. It's your daily 15 minute podcast on the latest in global news, politics and international relations.
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Listen to the Bloomberg Daybreak US Edition podcast each morning morning for the stories that matter with the context you need.
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