The race in autonomous driving is complex, highly competitive, and extremely capital-intensive, but one company is circumventing these challenges and could emerge as the ultimate winner in the industry. Uber Technologies (UBER) operates the world’s largest ride-hailing platform and has partnered with approximately 30 companies in the autonomous driving sector, which are deploying their vehicles on Uber’s network.
For most autonomous vehicle manufacturers, designing a good car is the relatively easy part. The real challenge lies in building the network, attracting customers, and delivering mobility services in a timely manner. Uber has already mastered all of these elements, which is why dozens of autonomous driving companies, including Waymo, are deploying their vehicles on Uber’s network rather than building their own. This is a win-win for all parties involved.
Uber’s autonomous driving partners gain immediate access to its 199 million monthly active users, while Uber can offer its customers a rich array of autonomous mobility options without bearing the high costs of vehicle manufacturing. The ride-hailing giant will only take a cut from each trip completed through its platform, in the same way it takes a cut from human-driven trips.
From a financial perspective, the shift to autonomous vehicles will have a transformative impact on Uber. The company reported total gross bookings of $53.7 billion for the first quarter of 2026, which represents the dollar value of all trips, food orders, and commercial deliveries made through its platform. Historical data indicates that approximately 44% of that amount, or $23.6 billion, likely went to the human drivers operating on its network. This has always been Uber’s single largest cost.
After excluding other costs such as payments to restaurants for food orders, Uber’s first-quarter revenue was $13.2 billion. After deducting operating expenses such as marketing, the company’s operating income was only $1.9 billion. That is right: Uber’s operating income accounted for less than 4% of its $53.7 billion in total gross bookings.
In theory, if Uber could eliminate this cost by replacing human drivers with autonomous vehicles, it would gain an additional $23.6 billion in revenue in the first quarter alone. A portion of that money would go to the owners of the autonomous vehicles on its network, but I believe that over the long term, this cost will be far lower than the cost of human drivers, especially because autonomous vehicles can operate around the clock without sleep, lunch breaks, or time off.
As of March 31, autonomous vehicles were already providing services through Uber in eight U.S. cities, with plans to expand to 15 cities by the end of 2026. In addition, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated that autonomous trips in the first quarter surged tenfold year-over-year and are scaling rapidly.
At the time of this writing, Uber’s price-to-sales ratio is only 2.7, below its long-term average of 4.1 since its public listing in 2019. This also means Uber is far cheaper than the Nasdaq-100 technology index, which has a price-to-sales ratio of 6.3. Tesla’s price-to-sales ratio is 13.6, which is five times that of Uber and twice that of the Nasdaq-100 index. As the autonomous driving revolution accelerates, Uber’s stock holds long-term investment value.
