Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi Talks Robotaxis & Booking Outlook

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**Ed Ludlow** (0:08)
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. You know, help us understand those two data points.

**Dara Khosrowshahi** (0:51)
Yeah, the gross bookings results that we had 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 this 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 guides that we gave last quarter. And hopefully we will meet and hopefully beat those kinds of expectations.

**Ed Ludlow** (2:12)
Dara, 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?

**Dara Khosrowshahi** (2:19)
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 like 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. And in the US, for example, driver earnings are up 8% on a year-on-year basis. So people talk about the K-shaped economy, but we think both sides of the K continue to be very healthy. And right now, all sides point to the same going forward.

**Ed Ludlow** (3:19)
Let's take the driver out of it for a moment and talk about Robotaxis. 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. Are you wanting to see the team accelerate a bit on that deployment, Dara?

**Dara Khosrowshahi** (3:37)
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. 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 Zuksan.
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 Alpima 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.

**Ed Ludlow** (5:01)
Dara, on Zoox, and I'll ask this obviously, but 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 Zoox be available on an Uber app in whichever city with a fare associated with it?