Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told shareholders the number of cities with autonomous vehicles on its platform could more than double and said Uber plans to commit around $10 billion to help partners scale self-driving fleets. The comments came alongside second-quarter 2026 results that show Uber trading at a steep discount to its own historical valuation.
Uber expands its autonomous vehicle push
Uber released its operating results for the second quarter of 2026, ended June 30, on Aug. 5. In his prepared remarks, Khosrowshahi gave shareholders an update on the company's shift toward autonomous vehicles and robots.
Autonomous vehicles are already running on Uber in seven cities, and Khosrowshahi said that number could more than double to 15 cities by the end of 2026. He also told shareholders Uber will deploy around $10 billion over the next few years to help its partners bring autonomous vehicles to market at scale. Rather than compete with self-driving car makers directly, Uber lets partners plug into its existing platform and its 208 million monthly active customers.
The math behind the autonomous bet
During the quarter, Uber logged $58 billion in gross bookings across rides, food orders, and deliveries. Of that, $25 billion went to the platform's 10.2 million drivers, its single largest cost. After other costs, Uber was left with $14.2 billion in revenue. After operating expenses, that fell to $2.4 billion in GAAP profit.
Because driver pay is Uber's biggest expense, shifting a growing share of trips to autonomous vehicles would lift revenue and profit even without adding new customers.
Valuation trails the company's own history
Uber has $55.2 billion in trailing 12-month revenue and a market capitalization of $153 billion. On that basis, the stock trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 2.8, well below its average of 4.1 since its 2019 IPO. The stock would need to climb 46% just to match that average multiple, before factoring in any future revenue growth.
For comparison, the stock would have to more than double to match the Nasdaq-100 index's price-to-sales ratio of 6.3. Uber already works with major autonomous vehicle developers, including Alphabet's Waymo, which completes over 500,000 paid autonomous trips across 11 U.S. cities every week.
Source: Motley Fool
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