Uber

Lyft is basically ceding the market to Uber at this point — they've cut sales teams, pulled back from driver incentives, and are laser focused on just surviving as a pure rideshare US play. Uber meanwhile is expanding into new verticals, new geographies, and building out the subscription layer. This competitive divergence is going to become really obvious in the next 12 months.

Has anyone looked closely at how Uber Eats is actually performing in markets where Delivery Hero or Grab dominate? I see the international growth numbers but I'm trying to understand whether they're winning share or just growing with the market.

Does anyone understand how Uber's insurance costs actually work across their different product lines? I know they self-insure a portion but I can't figure out how exposed they are if there's a bad claims year.

Uber's freight segment keeps getting overlooked but it's quietly becoming a real business. They processed over $1.5 billion in freight volume last quarter and the digital brokerage model scales way better than traditional trucking brokers. If logistics tech gets re-rated this is one of the cleaner plays.

Uber One is the most underappreciated part of the story right now. Subscribers spend roughly 3.4x more than non-subscribers and the membership is growing fast. Amazon proved that subscription flywheels completely change the economics of a platform business.

Waymo's partnership with Uber is a double-edged sword that people are misreading as bullish. If autonomous vehicles actually scale, Waymo doesn't need Uber's network forever — they'll eventually cut them out and go direct just like they're doing in Phoenix and San Francisco.

Uber reported that monthly active platform consumers hit 161 million in Q3 2024, up 13% year over year. Delivery gross bookings grew faster than mobility for the first time in several quarters, driven by international markets and Uber One subscriber adoption.

Something that doesn't get discussed enough is how much Uber's advertising business has grown. They're now running ads inside the app for restaurants and CPG brands and it's essentially pure margin. It's a small number today but every major platform that built an ad layer saw it become hugely material.

The UK just ruled that drivers must be classified as workers with minimum wage guarantees and Uber has faced similar reclassification battles across Europe. If the US ever seriously revisits gig worker classification under federal labor law, their entire cost structure gets repriced overnight.