Uber Technologies shares dropped after the company issued a bookings outlook that just met analyst estimates. Trips volume also fell short in the second quarter. Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi remains confident though and says there are no signs of a consumer slowdown. He also talks about expanding robotaxi partnerships in the US. He speaks to Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech."
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What Dara Khosrowshahi said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Khosrowshahi said Uber's gross bookings grew 22% in the quarter with quarter-on-quarter acceleration, driven by stable 20% mobility growth and accelerating delivery. He attributed a trip slowdown in Brazil to competition in food delivery, which pulled two-wheeler drivers away from mobility, but said it had no effect on Uber. He saw no signs of consumer slowdown, citing healthy mobility and delivery growth, and noted driver earnings in the U.S. were up 8% year-on-year. On robotaxis, Uber is in seven markets and on track to be in 15 by year-end. He said Zoox would be available on the Uber app in Las Vegas later this year, and that the Phoenix Waymo deployment was less than ten cars and immaterial. He argued multiple AV winners will emerge, comparing the market to foundation models, and said robotaxi pricing is strong with demand strong.
Key takeaways
Gross bookings grew 22% in the quarter with quarter-on-quarter acceleration; mobility stable at 20%.
Uber is on track to expand robotaxi operations from 7 to 15 markets by end of year.
Zoox robotaxis will be available on the Uber app in Las Vegas later this year.
U.S. driver earnings are up 8% year-on-year; no signs of consumer slowdown.
Phoenix Waymo deployment was less than ten cars and is not material to Uber.
1:31Is 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?
2:41Are you wanting to see the team accelerate a bit on that deployment, Dara?
4:22When will it be available on the Uber app in whichever city with a fare associated with it?
4:54There was a change of plans in Phoenix, but how confident are you also about sort of renewing non-exclusive contracts with Waymo?
5:57If we accept that Waymo's kind of the commercial robotaxi leader in the US, at least in terms of deployments charging a fare over the rest of the field, which do you think is most competitive or going to be most competitive against Waymo?
7:33So, Dara, really quick, to drive early adoption, is it important that the robotaxi firms price lower than other ride share?
The gross bookings look like there's a number of stories within it. I'd also note, like at the same time, rider activity seems to be increasing. You know, help us understand those two data points.
The gross bookings results that we have up 22% 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. In 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.
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 like consumers trading down and eating at more affordable restaurants 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. And 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.
Let's take the driver out of it for a moment and talk about robotaxis. You kind of explain 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. 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, human driver on our platform, we want every safe robot driver on our platform, and 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 Zoox on. They got a great approval from the TSA to run their really, really innovative and cool robot vehicles as well. We got approval for Wayve to start testing operations in London as well, and NVIDIA, who is a huge partner of ours, announced the release of their Alpha Model 2, 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 collection for a number of these partners, and then ultimately commercialization of these vehicles on the road in the cities in which we live.
Dara, on Zoox, and I'll ask you this, obviously, but, you know, now they can charge a fare, which is a first for a true robotaxi, no driver controls. When does that manifest on the Uber app? When will it be available on the Uber app in whichever city with a fare associated with it?
7 more exchanges in this transcript
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Khosrowshahi, D. (2026, August 5). Uber CEO Sees No Sign of Consumer Slowdown [Interview transcript]. Bloomberg Tech. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1179229/
MLA
Dara Khosrowshahi. "Uber CEO Sees No Sign of Consumer Slowdown." Bloomberg Tech, 5 Aug. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1179229/.
BibTeX
@misc{khosrowshahi2026_1179229,
author = {Dara Khosrowshahi},
title = {Uber CEO Sees No Sign of Consumer Slowdown},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Bloomberg Tech. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {aug},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1179229/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
