Nicholas

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi

Nicholas

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi joins Sourcery for a walkthrough of Uber’s newest product launches and the future of transportation, AI, delivery, travel, and autonomous vehicles. At Uber’s Go-Get showcase in New York City, Dara breaks down how Uber is evolving from a rideshare company into a global “go anywhere, get anything” platform. We discuss Uber’s new Expedia hotel partnership, AI-powered shopping agents, Uber’s autonomous vehicle strategy with Waymo, Zoox and Joby Aviation, and how AI is fundamentally changing the company’s operations and engineering culture. Dara also reflects on leading Uber through one of the largest corporate turnarounds in tech history, scaling the company from billions in losses to nearly $10B in free cash flow. Plus: how to actually raise your Uber rating. Subscribe for more conversations with the CEOs, founders, and investors shaping the future of technology, AI, mobility, and infrastructure. **Dara Khosrowshahi: https://x.com/dkhos Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea Sourcery:https://x.com/sourceryy 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊 YouTube: https://youtu.be/AK4hrrlCNUA 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourceryTuring—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourceryVCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio athttp://GetVCX.comDeelDeel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourceryPublic–**Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourceryMerge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc/ Disclosure Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber (00:48) The biggest bet of 2026 (02:04) The accidental feature (04:16) Your next Uber might come with a Coffee (05:54) Uber One’s global takeover (06:32) Growth hack to outpace rivals (08:04) Replacing overpriced room service (11:25) The Expedia reunion (14:10) The 10-minute airport hack (17:05) The $10 billion comeback (19:00) Barry Diller’s golden advice (22:49) Uber’s internal AI shift (26:59) Will AI make Uber apps obsolete? (27:36) Self-driving cars (28:47) AI’s biggest misconception (29:39) Hack your Uber rating (31:36) Junior Devs coding for millions

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Published May 8, 2026
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0:00-1:38

[00:00] You came into Uber. Uber was at $4.5 billion in losses. Now you've turned it around. Last year it was around $10 billion in free cash flow. Almost $10 billion, yeah. The fact that we are a complete platform allows us to grow faster than our competitors and be more profitable. We started as the Go app, just rides. Now Uber Eats is just as big as our rides business. Now we're going to travel. So it's pretty cool to announce this partnership with Expedia. We got almost 50 million members. So Uber One members, when you book hotels on Uber, you get 10% back [00:30] of your bookings and on 10,000 hotels you get at least 20% off. So this is gonna work. What's behind the door? Could be behind the door. [00:48] Dara, welcome to Sorcery. Thank you very much. Excited to be here. Well, thank you for having me here. Where are we today? What's going on? So we are at the [00:57] PAC, which is a performing arts center, [00:59] downtown New York. [01:01] And this is our GoGet showcase, GoGet26.com. [01:05] It's our consumer facing showcase where we show all of the cool stuff that we're building for you this year. [01:10] I heard the king is in town just for this. [01:15] We tried to get him over here, but it didn't work. That's amazing. So today you announced a lot of really exciting things. One of the most exciting things we'll come back to at the end, but you had a full circle moment with Expedia. So what's going on? We sure did. So we announced actually now making hotels available on Uber. You know, we started as the Go app, just rides, obviously.

1:40-3:05

[01:40] get Uber Eats and it was just an idea. Now Uber Eats is just as big as our rides business. [01:45] Now we're going to travel. So [01:48] go get travel and we're partnering with Expedia, which is a company that I ran before I came to Uber for 12 years. So it's pretty cool to announce this partnership with Expedia. Amazing. OK, so let's walk through and you can kind of showcase a couple of the things that are going on. Definitely. So this is one of the features that I'm the most excited about. It's called Shop for me on Uber. And this was actually inspired by our users. [02:14] who were hacking into essentially our system. We have a service called Uber Courier. Have you ever tried it? - Yeah. - Yeah, so courier is basically, it's a driver, [02:23] or it can be riding a bicycle, et cetera, a scooter. [02:27] who will take an item for you from one point to the other. If you forgot your computer or home or something, they can bring it to work for you. Anything that you want. What we saw is people who are using Courier, [02:37] were hacking the system and they were like, [02:40] asking couriers to go to a store for them and buy something for them and I'll pay you, I'll pay you back. And when we saw this, we're like, wow, we can actually productize this. And we're constantly looking at the searches, et cetera, what consumer behavior is and what we can productize. So this is actually a feature that essentially our users were hacking into. And it is shop for me on Uber. We send a courier out to a store.

3:10-4:43

[03:10] get anything on Uber. But the truth is, you can get anything that's available on Uber Eats, right? Now, literally, you can ask a courier to shop for you, go to any store, [03:21] um you can upload a picture of what you're looking for on the net what it's going to cost and the shopper goes there and we only get our best shoppers we match you with the best shoppers yeah and they will get approval like is this what you wanted here's what it's going to cost [03:35] Um, you can make it all happen. Payment is taken care of. [03:39] and the experience is absolutely seamless. It's amazing. So we actually really needed that a couple weeks ago. My videographer, Brett, [03:47] Sorry, Brett. I'm so sorry. We got to Hill and Valley Conference right before it started. He ripped his pants. Oh, my God. Wow. So he just ordered pants on Uber and it came over. Yeah. I love it. I hope they fit. I think they did. Yeah. He was looking good, right? Yeah. My wife is going to be very happy about this. It may cost me a little something, but it's a very, very cool feature. Amazing. Okay, so let's keep on going. All right, let's keep walking. [04:13] You know, over here, you want some coffee or are you properly caffeinated? So this is part of it, right? Like you can now get coffees in your Ubers? Yeah. So this is very, very cool. And what we try to do is create these surprise and delight moments for consumers. At the same time, another part of the strategy is, you know, we have users who use Uber rides and we have people who use Uber Eats and we're trying to create. [04:35] cross-platform interaction consumers who use both services usually spend three times more they're much more loyal to the platform so

4:43-6:14

[04:43] we want to introduce the different services in a delightful way, [04:47] This one is pretty cool. So when you order an Uber reserve, we also have Uber Elite for the next level. Yeah. You can actually order a coffee to be in your Uber when you're going to work. It's one of those really cool interactions. And again, it's a great way to go. [05:02] Maybe you didn't use Uber for delivery, et cetera. It's a little way for us to upsell you the other services that we offer, but a pretty cool way to do it. That's amazing. Wow. Yeah. So hopefully you can try next time, you know. I will. Hopefully you won't get coffee on your pants, though, because then, well, maybe it will be good for us, actually. Every time I wear a white T-shirt or anything, immediately. Coffee, matcha, it's just all over me. That's why I go with dark, you know, sweaters. They're indestructible. [05:32] This one is feedback that we got from our Uber One members. Should we sit in the chairs? Yeah, I mean, if you'd like to. I don't know if they work. You get the front. Let's see here. Do these chairs work? [05:42] No, they don't work. Look at that. All right, how's this? What can I get you? Do you like coffee on your way to your Uber? So this is for Uber. Okay, you got some wings. Here you go. Thank you. Take those with you. Yeah. So this is for Uber One members. Are you an Uber One member? Of course. All right. Excellent. So are Uber One members one of the complaints that they had, and as you can imagine, [06:03] Um, people who use Uber tends to travel a lot. [06:06] And because we're available in 72 plus countries now, [06:10] They tend to be global travelers like [06:12] Use your Uber when you land.

6:14-7:57

[06:14] one of the additional benefits that they were asking for is [06:18] I want to get Uber One credits and benefits when I'm traveling, not just when I'm at home, [06:25] so of course we listen to our most valuable uh users our members [06:29] And this is going to be available for international travel as well. [06:33] How much of the customer requests just end up getting front run to become new launches? Oh, a huge number. We're constantly watching what customers say. And the cool thing is now with AI, we can have AI agents essentially look at searches, etc. What are the most common requests? Customer service, same thing. When we get calls, all of that can be summarized. [06:57] and can be put into what could be a potential roadmap that we look to build. And then do you test them internally if it's like actually commercially viable? You know, we just test them. We put them out into the market. I mean, one of our philosophies is, we just want to build stuff. And if you're not failing, like this is, I think a cool feature is going to be a win. [07:17] But we want to move faster. We want to take risks. Some of these products are going to work. Most of them, we hope. But some of them aren't going to work. And that's okay because, you know, one of the hallmarks of Uber is, [07:29] We're builders. We want to build fast. Most of our growth is going to come through building new great products versus going out and buying stuff. And it's part of the building process that we've got. What are some of the weirdest things that have popped up? [07:42] Some of the weirdest things that have popped up for us are actually like all of the requests that we find. Even people saying, can you go and get some cash from me at the bank? You know, like the trust that people put with. Uber money. Curries, yeah. We're going to think about that.

7:59-9:36

[07:59] - All right, so over here, let's see what we've got. Oh yeah, so this is [08:06] Travel mode. [08:07] Right. So this is what I was talking about in terms of [08:11] travelers using Uber a lot. And I don't know about you, but [08:15] Room service at hotels has suffered over the past 10 years. This is true. You know, you never know if it's going to be available. You often have to wait for a long time. It's often really expensive. [08:25] So we now know... [08:27] Uh, when you're in a hotel and you open up Uber Eats, [08:31] kind of switch to travel mode. [08:33] and we offer essentially room service. [08:37] But it's from all the restaurants around the hotel, local places, etc. [08:41] deliver to your hotel. And because we recognize you're in a hotel, we make all the adjustments, you know, meet in the lobby, or if we know the hotel can deliver to the door, deliver to the door, et cetera, so that we can make your [08:54] in-room experience and room service kind of an uber eats room service which is very very cool i was just visiting vegas and the room service there is like 500 for a pot of coffee it's insane yeah and you don't have any money to gamble there you go you can use your breeds for that yeah amazing okay come on over would you like oh here we go yeah yeah what do you think sweet or salty what do you think i like salty yeah [09:20] - Here you go. - Thank you. - I'm gonna go for Sweet. I wanna see what Sweet has to offer. - There you go. - Thank you very much. [09:26] Really appreciate it. What have we got in here? I don't know. [09:28] How do you open this? What is a bonbon? Oh my god, it's... Is it cool? It's little Swedish candies. Yeah.

9:38-11:23

[09:38] What? [09:38] There we go. [09:40] This is salty? [09:44] We can't have this because we're going to be chewing crazy. Yeah, you're right. You're right. I love this. Thank you. I love my gifts. Yeah. [09:53] Sorcery is brought to you by Brex, the financial stack trusted by more than 30,000 companies, including one in three venture-backed startups in the U.S. Nearly 40% of startups fail because they run out of cash. Brex is literally built to help founders avoid that. Unlike traditional banks that let your money sit idle, chipping away at it with fees, Brex is designed to help you spend smarter and move faster. [10:23] powerful account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get 20 times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks, and even high yield from day one. With same day and even same hour liquidity, access your funds anytime. Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, Service Titan, HIMSS, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid trust and use Brex. [10:53] Turing is training the next generation of AI with tasks that require real expertise and real world judgment. That's why companies like NVIDIA, Anthropic, Salesforce, and Gemini partner with Turing. Turing builds realistic reinforcement learning environments and data systems based on real operational traces. The kind of infrastructure frontier labs need to train superintelligence. Visit Turing.com slash S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y.

11:23-12:53

[11:23] All right, and then last... [11:25] And certainly not least, this is what we talked about. Yes. This is hotels on Uber that we're going to see. [11:31] Huge. Huge. And what we're super excited about this one is, [11:36] for Uber One members, right? So first, [11:40] all of the information, [11:41] that you already have with Uber, credit card, your identity, all that stuff we already have. We're working with Expedia, my old company. Wow. How'd that happen? Yeah, it's amazing. I did seriously. I had to recuse myself from the process because I'm still on the Expedia board. Oh, okay. So from a governance standpoint, it's like, hey, Dara, you can't be- So then how do you set that up? I asked the team, basically. You know, travel has always been- You just send them over and push over a note on a table? [12:11] But we've always thought about travel. It's a huge use case on Uber. And it was natural for us to add hotels as another product. In Europe, for example, we already have trains available in the UK and France and Spain. [12:24] So originally it's like, well, it's wire up everything that moves. [12:27] But then how do we actually build around the experience of movement and traveling as well? Hotels was a natural for us. [12:34] The focus for me has been [12:36] deepening the relationship with Uber One members. You know, we got almost 50 million members. [12:42] It's a unique offering, which is you get discounts on rides, you get discounts on delivery as well. What else can we offer these members to keep our membership growth really, really high and keep your attention? [12:52] really high as well.

12:53-14:40

[12:53] and savings on hotels, [12:55] was something that came up. And so Uber One members, when you book hotels on Uber, you get 10% back on all of your bookings, regardless of which hotels you book on. [13:06] and on 10 000 hotels kind of a rolling list [13:09] you get at least 20% off. [13:11] So there's an incentive to book on Uber, and we think it's going to be a delightful experience. I think you mentioned there's 700,000 available hotels. And we're going to add Verbos. Oh, wow. So both for hotels and vacation rentals as well. You know, if you're vacationing with a family, you need that Uber XXL. We'll get you to Uber Roads as well. So... [13:33] When you book an Uber, [13:35] Do you... [13:35] Book Uber Black. [13:37] SUV, what do you book? I usually book Uber black and then SUV if I'm going to the airport. What else? What are your tips? So I don't know if it's a tip. I'm a little spoiled. [13:50] I order Uber Reserve all the time. So even if it's like a date night with my wife, [13:57] Instead of just like booking the Uber and you're not sure, et cetera, I order an Uber reserve and, you know, we know exactly when we have to go out there. [14:04] The car is waiting. [14:05] It's a pretty awesome luxury they have. When are we gonna have Uber planes? [14:10] So. [14:11] We are having Joby. We have a relationship with Joby Aviation. I don't know if you saw them. They were flying these. I saw that. It was so cool. Like 10 minutes to JFK. It's unbelievable. So we actually have a relationship with Joby. [14:23] And we're hoping now to get Joby on Uber as well once those flights actually start carrying passengers. So it's, you know, any way you want to go someplace, save some time, maybe save a little bit of money when you're traveling, we want to be there for you. Yeah. I was talking to Brooke about this on the way over.

14:40-16:20

[14:40] Airplanes don't have great Wi-Fi. Maybe Uber Wi-Fi. It's something we're going to have to work. Just an idea. Free Wi-Fi if you're an Uber One member. I think it can happen. Oh, I think we got to test this out. All right. You go for it. [14:52] You want me to? Well, where do you want to go? You want to go to Paris? I would love to go to Tokyo. Tokyo. Yeah. Garing international. Good taste. [15:00] All right, so this is Tokyo. [15:02] uh you know this is so this is actually [15:06] The search, let's see. It's doing it for us. It's doing the demo. This is the AI. I'm usually doing this myself in the product demos. [15:15] So you can put in the dates as well, you know, any kids, and then you get a bunch of choices. [15:23] And... [15:24] You're on 223 bucks. [15:27] - It's pretty good. - Any more credits? [15:28] Choose your room. [15:30] and you know see all the details so it's all of the stuff that you're used to [15:35] and it's incredibly easy we already have all your payment date uh [15:39] Details. [15:40] And it's just like. [15:42] You know, ordering Uber. Wait, Dara. It's as easy as that. We get what you do. [15:45] All right, let's see. Oh, you want to pick it? Go check it out. [15:53] So this is going to work. What's behind the door? What's behind the door? Could be behind the door. Should I get out? Let's see. [16:01] Oh my God, it's Tokyo. Bye guys. I'm just kidding. That's really cool. It's almost like you're there. I know. It's like a next transportation portal. Yeah, there we go. Uber teleport. Maybe, maybe one day we'll get that going. It's hilarious. I'll put this right back. There you go.

16:21-17:53

[16:21] So what were some of the biggest lessons you spent nearly a decade at Expedia? What were the biggest lessons from there? So for me, it's supply, supply, supply. Okay. Right. So at Expedia, [16:33] uh [16:33] obviously we're a consumer company but what's most important is the inventory of hotels that you've got the pricing the hotels that you've got available [16:41] And that's certainly something that we see at Uber. I mean, again, [16:46] you think that you want to add consumers you want to add audience uber but what it's about is [16:50] getting as many cars as possible, signing up as many grocers and restaurants as possible. And when you build out the best supply, [16:58] then consumers show up because we make it easy and we make it worth your time and worth your dollar. [17:03] I think you're... [17:04] Pretty humble. You came into Uber. Uber was at 4.5 billion in losses. [17:09] Now you've turned it around. Last year it was around $10 billion in free cash flow. Almost $10 billion, yeah. [17:14] So did you have to rewrite your brain? Like, how did you how did you come in and do this amazing turnaround? What were the key? Well, thank you. I appreciate it. You know, one thing I would tell you is that a lot of people talk about Uber. You know, when I came there, obviously, there was a lot of controversy in terms of. [17:31] the culture, etc. But the team had built a good business [17:35] in terms of demand and the brand and our presence globally so [17:40] While things were not easy, I kind of was standing on the shoulders of giants and this was an incredible brand. [17:47] And for me, I got to bring in some of the new team and then kind of continue some of the old team together.

17:53-19:25

[17:53] and build on the foundations that we already had. [17:56] The fact is that Uber was incredibly popular. [17:59] We really focused on supply. We focused on safety as well. [18:03] because both our drivers and our riders want to feel safe. [18:06] And then once we got to Uber Eats and started building a cross-platform relationship, you know, we compete with lots of people. [18:14] But most of our competitors are monolined. They either have rides or they have Eats. The fact that we are a complete platform allows us to grow faster than our competitors and be more profitable than our competitors as well. Do you think Eats will surpass rides at some point? [18:31] God, you're asking me to like choose between my favorite children. I will say I order about three to four salads a day and maybe two rides. [18:39] So, I don't know. It's up for you. It looks like it's fantastic. I mean, the two are... [18:43] Essentially the same size. I would say that if eats was just about food, I'd say rides would be bigger, but actually eats now, [18:50] it's grocery and we're wiring up like every other local business [18:55] I wouldn't be surprised if he eats as bigger than Rod's 10 years from now. Yeah. So what did you learn from Barry Dillard? [19:02] I learned so much from Barry Diller, but [19:05] You know, one of the things that I learned from him is that [19:08] I'm comfortable going against the grain. [19:09] you know barry was the ultimate counter puncher he kind of took on [19:14] ab you know abc nbc cbs [19:17] uh you didn't grow up with them but a lot of people grew up with them and he he built fox which was a new uh a new product

19:25-20:59

[19:25] I've always been comfortable going against the grain. And it's one of the things that encouraged me to join Uber. From the outside, things looked really, really difficult. But we got in there. And at first, it was, you know, climbing uphill. [19:39] uh but the desire to go against the grain was something that i learned from him i listened to a couple interviews that you did and seeking truth and getting to answers seems to be one of the leaders and how you get to products faster innovations faster where did that come from uh that came from barry as well so he uh he actually met me when i was an analyst at an investment bank [20:01] He wanted to see the person [20:02] building the model. And, you know, what I find is that, [20:06] as you move up in organizations, [20:09] Actually, while you get a broader view of the company, a lot of times you actually don't understand what's really going on in the company. Right. And so you do have to be that truth seeker. And it requires you like not to manage a way that you might be taught. You know, I go and I sit down with engineers and product product members, two, three, four levels down. We jam no decks, really talk about what's going on. [20:35] And I'm very, very honest with them in terms of what our challenges are. Like, I don't talk corporate speak to them. Everyone has a pretty good BS meter wherever you are. [20:45] And if a senior member of the team is BSing his team, [20:49] Then they're going to BS you right back. So part of it is not depending on the hierarchy to get you their information, going and getting their information directly. And the second is to be a truth-sayer.

20:59-22:31

[20:59] and it be a truth seeker as well. [21:02] VCX by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View the portfolio at GetVCX.com. That's GetVCX.com. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called Generated Assets, and it brings AI into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. [21:31] or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25% year over year. Publix AI then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single US stock, evaluates them, and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis. What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included. And before you invest, you can even backtest your idea against the S&P 500, so you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. And beyond generated assets, Publix lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto, [22:02] They'll even give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your investments over from another platform. If you want to build a portfolio that actually reflects your thesis, visit public.com slash sorcery. [22:12] Paid for by public investing. Full disclosures in the description. [22:16] Enterprise AI runs on Merge, the AI infra platform for integrations, agent tooling, and model orchestration, so your teams ship product, not plumbing. Mistral, Dropbox, and Drada already trust Merge in production. Start building at merge.dev.

22:32-24:04

[22:32] Founders scale faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit deal.com slash sorcery. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash sorcery. [22:47] You mentioned how AI is helping inform product decisions. How else is AI impacting the business and operations, whether it is teams? [22:56] communications, [22:58] or the next era of Uber. So it's like changing... [23:04] how we build in every single way. [23:07] One of the cool things about Uber is that [23:09] We've always been comfortable with a probabilistic world. You know, most companies are kind of, they want certainty, et cetera, but [23:17] While you can get certainty in your digital life, you know, with an app, you build the interactions, et cetera. [23:23] in real life things can go wrong you know you can order that uber and we told you it's a four minute eta the driver cancels we have to actually get you another driver etc so there's all kinds of uncertainty that happens in the real world [23:38] And we have been built on top of that. So everything that we build, [23:42] has been algorithmic in nature, your pricing, your matching. [23:46] your uh your east feet etc now it it's it went from very simple algorithms to deep learning algorithms and now obviously to much larger foundation models so for persons like [24:00] culturally, [24:01] companies are often

24:04-25:36

[24:04] uncomfortable with with uncertainty we live in uncertainty because the real world [24:11] can punch you in the face sometimes, right? All kinds of things can go wrong. And so approaching with this [24:17] probabilistic mindset of what outcomes can be is really important in terms of driving our culture [24:23] We've had a leg up because we've been we've been building out algorithmically. [24:27] but our developers are all using Claude and actually Codex is pretty cool as well. And in developing, we're seeing the number of diffs per developer go up. We've seen the number of [24:38] lines per diff go up as well. So there's a lot of input going in and there's a lot of productivity coming out from our engineers. All the tools, if you're doing a code review, etc. We have agents doing code reviews, but we also want to make sure that a person looks at the code reviews. [24:57] a lot of the debugging that goes on understanding where all the services are [25:02] People used to kind of go hunt and click within the system. As you can imagine, the system is very, very complex. [25:08] Now agents can do that for you. So the way that we build has completely changed. [25:13] uh we're working to change our customer service as well uh to have agents uh digital agents first help [25:20] our human agents, [25:21] and then our human agents start to train AI models as well. And it's interesting there, [25:28] You know, I think a lot of the approaches to building AIs have been kind of a surface approach. Let's optimize. [25:34] 10 or 20 percent of the process.

25:36-27:07

[25:36] we're trying to go ground up at first principles so [25:40] Originally, when we were trying to train our AI agents, we were training them on the policies that we have. [25:46] If you're an Uber One member and your delivery is 10 minutes late, what do we do over the ETA, etc.? [25:53] Those policies are in place because they're the best guess for us as to how to treat you as a customer, how to get. [25:58] to the right outcomes. [25:59] Now with our agents, we can train them on what's my goal. My goal is to make Molly who's a Uber one member, you know, a happy customer. [26:09] And so the agents themselves can now reason around the outcome that you're going after. [26:14] And what we're seeing is really, really promising. [26:16] And then, of course, lots of consumer interactions. So [26:20] You can. [26:21] put a shopping list, speak a shopping list, you can [26:24] You can take a picture of the shopping list that you scribbled together. You can take a picture of, you know, piece of lasagna. We did the demo. I saw that. That was great. You got even the basil in there. Exactly. And like we build a shopping list and you it makes it incredibly easy. So all of these really cool products are coming out on market. Some of them are going to hit. Some of them aren't. But we really believe in being aggressive and experimenting at putting it out to the real world. [26:53] Um, [26:54] really watching what the results are and then iterating from there. What do you think about this new trend of headless companies? Like Salesforce just made that announcement that they're pretty much going to become an API. Yeah. So I think that,

27:07-28:44

[27:07] It's going to be part of the interaction, right? We will work with an open AI so that an open AI agent can essentially get an Uber for you as well. [27:17] But we also want to be that front end. [27:19] and we want to have people come to Uber and [27:24] talk to Uber, get me a trip to the hotel, et cetera. So any way that you want to interact with our services, we want to be there, whether it's headless, [27:31] or it's actually through our apps and through our services. [27:35] So AI is one of the biggest trends, but also AVs are a big trend. I know you've had a lot of announcements with this. I last saw you at a dinner for the Zoox partnership. Yes, very excited about that. That was amazing. So what's going on with AVs? How is Uber getting involved? So we believe we have a platform strategy with AVs. [27:53] uh in that just like we want every safe human driver on the platform we want every safe robot driver on the platform whether it's a waymo or a zoox or it's a we ride the fact is that the ai ecosystem [28:07] is incredibly healthy and only accelerating. There are a number of companies that are going to get to the finish line in terms of developing a digital driver that's safer than a human driver. We think it's going to be great for society. [28:20] We want to help those companies. [28:22] get to market. So for example, we partner with Waymo in Austin, Atlanta, you might get hooked up with a human driver or you might get connected to a Waymo driver. We're launching with Zoox, Wave, WeRide, many other partners. So we are helping the AV ecosystem thrive and ultimately scale.

28:44-30:28

[28:44] Amazing. So I guess taking a step back, what are biggest misconceptions about tech today? [28:51] So I think the biggest misconception, I think, comes to AI. I think the public is really [28:57] worried about what AI means, this, the fears of job displacement. [29:02] are real and the fact is no one knows what those outcomes are going to be [29:06] But... [29:07] I think to the average consumer, [29:10] you know, AI is cool. ChatGPT is awesome. I'm on it constantly. I'm coding with Claude, etc. But I'm not the typical consumer. We need to bring out these AI products. [29:20] uh and surprise and delight consumers every day so that they see ai working for them [29:27] not replacing the work that they do. I think if we do that, we're all going to be okay. And AI is going to be something that's cool for tech companies. [29:34] but it's going to be even cooler for the general population. Okay, I have to ask. Sure. How do you get your Uber rating up? It's simple. What is your Uber rating? So my Uber rating is like 4.83. I got to get to 4.9. I got to get to 4.9. Brooke and I were comparing ours. What's yours? 4.8. [29:52] 8.6. All right. So you're better than me. 4.85. Yeah. So what I'm doing is make sure I'm on time. Okay. And then the thing is, I'm on the phone a lot. So now I'm asking permission from my Uber driver. Is it okay if I take a call? [30:06] None of them have ever said no yet. Do they know who you are? [30:10] Half of them know who I am and then you know we chat on how things are going and you know how we can improve the product and then half of them kind of they're doing their own thing and I do my own thing it's all good. Okay so what are the other tips? So be on time ask for permission when you're making a call tip your driver although that doesn't affect the ratings that's just.

30:28-32:01

[30:28] you know, self-serving and helping our druggers. How much should you tip? I tip a lot. [30:32] I'm a good tip. Like 200%? What are we talking about? You know, for like a $30 ride, I'll tip 10, 15 bucks. You know, it's not bad. And then don't slam the door. [30:44] You know, but I think the most important is [30:47] Be on time. [30:48] Our drivers, time is money. That's why they're on the platform, flexibly, et cetera. So being on time is the biggest tip. But you have to give me tips because your rating is better than mine. [30:58] I am just a girl. I don't know. I am polite. Are you on the phone? Are you like, I actually am. I was like, I don't know why my rating is that high. I, I, I get into the Uber. I post most, by the way, I post most of my interviews like on the go. And so I opened my laptop. I get on my hotspot. I download the video. I upload it. It's always in an Uber. Can you believe that? And then so like, what are you doing? They're like, what are you doing? I have like the, the sound all the way up. Usually my AirPods are dead. And then I'm on a call afterwards. [31:28] So it's, but then afterwards I'm like, thank you so much. Yeah. Something's working for you. Very cool. Yeah. Okay. So as we wrap up. Yes. [31:36] What are you most excited for this year? [31:38] I am most excited for everything that AI can bring and the productivity, the imagination of our developers. What's really cool is like, [31:46] We have developers in Amsterdam and India, relatively junior developers who are just blowing up in terms of how much code they're committing and what they're building like this, the power of AI to empower AI.

32:01-32:43

[32:01] Everybody? [32:02] to build like these [32:03] amazing, amazing products that we're showcasing. And for individual contributors at this company to have an impact and build features that millions of people see. [32:14] That's what's really cool. [32:15] Amazing. Thank you so much, Dara. You bet. [32:17] Good seeing you. I have all the things in my hands. Enjoy your salty. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Cool. Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.

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