Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi

Uber https://www.uber.com?utm_source=chatgpt.com 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 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 • Brex https://brex.com/sourcery—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery • Turing https://turing.com/sourcery—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/sourcery •VCX https://fundrise.com/vcx—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio athttp://GetVCX.com http://getvcx.com • Deel https://www.deel.com/sourcery—Deel 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/sourcery • Public http://public.com/sourcery–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets https://public.com/generated-asset, 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/sourcery https://public.com/sourcery • Merge https://merge.dev—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 http://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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Molly O'Shea?

  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.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  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 on all of your bookings. And on 10,000 hotels, you get at least 20% off.

• 0:33Molly O'Shea?

  So this is gonna work. What's behind the door?

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Could be behind the door.

• 0:48Molly O'Shea?

  Dara, welcome to Sorcery.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. Excited to be here.

• 0:52Molly O'Shea?

  Well, thank you for having me here. Where are we today? What's going on?

• 0:55Speaker 01

  So we are at the PACC, which is a performing arts center downtown New York. And this is our Go Get Showcase, Go Get 26. It's our consumer-facing showcase where we show all of the cool stuff that we're building for you this year.

• 1:10Molly O'Shea?

  I heard the king is in town just for this?

• 1:15Speaker 01

  We tried to get him over here, but it didn't work.

• 1:18Molly O'Shea?

  Well, 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?

• 1:28Speaker 01

  We sure did. So we announced actually now making hotels available on Uber. You know, we started as the Go app, just rides, obviously. And then we went with Get, Uber Eats, and it was just an idea. Now Uber Eats is just as big as our rides business. Now we're going to travel. So 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.

• 1:59Molly O'Shea?

  Amazing. Okay, so let's walk through and you can kind of showcase a couple of the things that are going on.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  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 who were hacking into essentially our system. We have a service called Uber Courier. Have you ever tried it?

• 2:20Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Courier is basically it's a driver. Or it can be riding a bicycle, etcetera, scooter. 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 were hacking the system and they were like 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, etcetera, 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.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  We send a courier out to a store. And you know, we've always wanted for you to be able to go anywhere, get anything on Uber. But the truth is you can get anything that's available on Uber, Uber Eats, right? Now, literally, you can ask a courier to shop for you, go to any store. You can upload a picture of what you're looking for on the net, what it's gonna cost. And the shopper goes there and we only get our best shoppers who match you with the best shoppers.

• 3:31Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  And they will get approval, like, is this what you wanted? Here's what it's gonna cost. You can make it all happen. Payment is taken care of and the experience is absolutely seamless.

• 3:41Molly O'Shea?

  It's amazing. So we actually really needed that a couple of weeks ago. My videographer Brett, sorry Brett, I'm so sorry. We got to Hillen Valley Conference right before it started, he ripped his pants.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Oh my god, wow.

• 3:56Molly O'Shea?

  So he just ordered pants on Uber and it came over, yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  I love it. I hope he fit.

• 4:01Molly O'Shea?

  I think, I think they did.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was looking good, right?

• 4:03Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  This, my, my wife is gonna be very happy about this. It may cost me a little something, but it's a very, very cool feature.

• 4:10Molly O'Shea?

  Amazing. Okay, so let's keep on going.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Walking. You know, over here, you want some coffee or you properly caffeinated?

• 4:16Molly O'Shea?

  So this is part of it, right? Like you can now get coffees in your Ubers?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so this is very, very cool. And what we try to do is create these surprise and delight moment 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 cross-platform interaction. Consumers who use both services usually spend three times more. They're much more loyal to the platform. So we want to introduce the different services in a delightful way. This one is pretty cool. So when you order an Uber Reserve, we also have Uber Elite for the next level.

• 4:53Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  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, maybe you didn't use Uber for delivery, et cetera. We, it's a little way for us to upsell you the other services that we offer, but a pretty cool way to do it.

• 5:12Molly O'Shea?

  That's amazing.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So hopefully you can try next time, you know?

• 5:16Molly O'Shea?

  I will.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Hopefully you won't get coffee on your pants, though, because then, well, maybe it will be good for us, actually.

• 5:21Molly O'Shea?

  Every time I wear a white t-shirt or anything, immediately, coffee, matcha, it's just all over me.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  That's why I go with dark, you know, sweaters. It's, uh, they're indestructible. So this one is feedback that we got from our Uber One members.

• 5:36Molly O'Shea?

  Should we sit in the chairs?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if you'd like to. I don't know if they work.

• 5:39Molly O'Shea?

  You get the front.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Let's see here. Do these chairs work? No, they don't work. Look at that. All right, how's this? What can I get you? If you like coffee on your way to your Uber? So, so this is.

• 5:49Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, my God.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Okay, you got some wings. Here you go.

• 5:52Molly O'Shea?

  Thank you.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Take those with you.

• 5:53Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Um, so this is for Uber One members. Are you an Uber One member?

• 5:57Molly O'Shea?

  Of course.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  All right.

• 5:58Molly O'Shea?

  Yes.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  So our Uber One members, one of the complaints that they had, and as you can imagine, um, people who use Uber tend to travel a lot. And because we're available in 72-plus countries now, they tend to be global travelers. Like, use your Uber when you land. One of the additional benefits that they were asking for is I want to get Uber One credits and benefits when I'm traveling, not just when I'm at home. So of course, we listen to our most valuable users, our members, uh, and this is going to be available for international travel as well.

• 6:33Molly O'Shea?

  How much of the customer requests just end up getting front run to become new launches?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Oh, a huge number. We're constantly watching what customers say. And the cool thing is now with AI.

• 6:44Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  We can have AI agents essentially look at searches, et cetera. What are the most common requests? Customer service, same thing. What we get calls. All of that can be summarized and can be put into what could be a potential roadmap that we look to build.

• 7:01Molly O'Shea?

  And then do you test them internally if it's like actually commercially viable?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  You know, we, so 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. 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 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 got.

• 7:40Molly O'Shea?

  What are some of the weirdest things that have popped up?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:54Molly O'Shea?

  Uber money.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Curious, yeah. We're going to think about that.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  All right. So over here, let's see what we've got. Oh, yeah. So this is travel mode, right? So this is what I was talking about in terms of travelers using Uber a lot. And I don't know about you, but room service at hotels has suffered over the past 10 years.

• 8:19Molly O'Shea?

  This is true.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  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. So we now know when you're in a hotel and you open up Uber Eats, kind of switch to travel mode. And we offer essentially room service, but it's from all the restaurants around the hotel, local places, et cetera, delivered 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 in-room experience and room service, kind of an Uber Eats room service, which is very, very cool.

• 8:59Molly O'Shea?

  I was just visiting Vegas and the room service there is like $500 for a pot of coffee. It's insane.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you don't have any money to gamble. There you go. You can use Uber Eats for that.

• 9:11Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, amazing. Okay. Oh, here we go.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. What do you think? Sweet or salty? What do you think?

• 9:18Molly O'Shea?

  I like salty. Yeah.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 9:21Molly O'Shea?

  Thank you.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go for sweet. I wanna see what sweet has to offer.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  There you go. Thank you very much.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Really appreciate it.

• 9:27Molly O'Shea?

  What have we got in here?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Some nice bonbons.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Some bonbons.

• 9:30Molly O'Shea?

  What is a bonbon? Oh, my God, it's.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Is it cool?

• 9:34Molly O'Shea?

  It's a little Swedish candy.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Why? There we go. If I have this, I'm gonna be.

• 9:44Molly O'Shea?

  All right.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  We can't have this because we're gonna be chewing crazy.

• 9:46Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, exactly. You're right. You're right.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  We're gonna save this for after.

• 9:48Molly O'Shea?

  I love this. Thank you. I love my gifts. Yeah.

• 9:53Molly O'Shea?

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• 10:38Molly O'Shea?

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• 11:08Molly O'Shea?

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• 11:23Speaker 01

  All right, and then last and certainly last least, this is what we talked about.

• 11:28Molly O'Shea?

  Yes.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  This is hotels on Uber that we're gonna see.

• 11:31Molly O'Shea?

  Huge.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Huge. And what we're super excited about this one is for Uber One members, right? So first, all of the information 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.

• 11:50Molly O'Shea?

  How'd that happen?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's amazing. I did, seriously, I had to recuse myself from the process because I'm still on the Expedia board.

• 11:58Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, okay.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  So from a governance standpoint, it's like, hey, Dara, you can't be-

• 12:02Molly O'Shea?

  So then how do you set that up? What's the-

• 12:04Speaker 01

  I asked the team, basically, you know, travel has always been-

• 12:07Molly O'Shea?

  You just send them over and push over a note on the table? Be like, Expedia.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  No, no, we did it the right way. 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. So originally, it's like, well, it's wire up everything that moves. But then, how do we actually build around the experience of movement and traveling as well? Hotels was a natural for us. The focus for me has been deepening the relationship with Uber One members. You know, we got almost 50 million members. 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 retention really high as well?

• 12:53Speaker 01

  And savings on hotels 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. And on 10,000 hotels, kind of a rolling list, you get at least 20% off. So there's an incentive to book on Uber, and we think it's gonna be a delightful experience.

• 13:16Molly O'Shea?

  I think you mentioned there's 700,000 available hotels.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  And we're gonna add verbos. 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 through a verbos as well.

• 13:32Molly O'Shea?

  So when you book an Uber, do you book Uber Black SUV? What do you book?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  I usually book Uber Black.

• 13:42Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  And then SUV if I'm going to the airport.

• 13:44Molly O'Shea?

  What else? What else? What are your tips?

• 13:46Speaker 01

  So I don't know if it's a tip.

• 13:48Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm a little spoiled. Uh, I order Uber Reserve all the time. So even if it's like a date night with my wife, instead of just like booking the Uber and you're not sure, etc., I order Uber Reserve and, you know, we know exactly when we have to go out there. The car is waiting. Um, it's a pretty awesome luxury to have.

• 14:08Molly O'Shea?

  When are we gonna have Uber planes?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  So we are having Joby. We have a relationship with Joby Aviation. I don't know if you saw them. They were flying these.

• 14:16Molly O'Shea?

  Saw that. It was so cool.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Like 10 minutes to JFK.

• 14:19Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable. Uh, so we actually have a relationship with Joby 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 wanna get, uh, go someplace.

• 14:33Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Save some time, maybe save a little bit of money when you're traveling. We wanna be there for you.

• 14:37Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. I was talking to Brooke about this on the way over. Airplanes don't have great Wi-Fi. Maybe Uber Wi-Fi.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  It's something we're gonna have to work.

• 14:44Molly O'Shea?

  Just an idea.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Free Wi-Fi if you're an Uber One member. I think it can happen.

• 14:48Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, I, I think we gotta test this out.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  All right.

• 14:51Molly O'Shea?

  You go for it.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  You, you want me to?

• 14:53Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Well, where do you wanna go? You wanna go Paris, Tokyo?

• 14:56Molly O'Shea?

  I would love to go to Tokyo.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Tokyo, right? Carrying international, good taste. All right, so this is Tokyo. Uh, you know, this is, so this is actually the search. Let's see. Uh.

• 15:08Molly O'Shea?

  It's, it's doing it for us.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  It's doing the demo.

• 15:11Molly O'Shea?

  This is the AI.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  I'm usually doing this myself in the, in the product demos. So you can put in the dates, uh, as well. You know, any kids? And then you get a bunch of choices. And you earn 223 bucks.

• 15:27Molly O'Shea?

  Pretty good.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  In Uber credits. Choose your room. And, you know, see all the details. So it's all of the stuff that you're used to. And it's incredibly easy. We already have all your payment da- uh, details. And it's just like, you know, ordering Uber.

• 15:43Molly O'Shea?

  Great, Doris.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  It's as easy as that.

• 15:45Molly O'Shea?

  And I've locked the door.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  All right, let's see.

• 15:48Molly O'Shea?

  Oh.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  You wanna pick it? Go check it out.

• 15:51Molly O'Shea?

  Sure.

• 15:53Molly O'Shea?

  So this is gonna work. What's behind the door? What's behind the door?

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Could be behind the door. Check it out and we'll see.

• 16:01Molly O'Shea?

  Oh my god, it's Tokyo. Bye guys. I'm just kidding.

• 16:07Molly O'Shea?

  That's really cool.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  It's almost like you're there.

• 16:08Molly O'Shea?

  I know. It's like a next transportation portal.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, there we go. Uber teleport. Maybe one day we'll get that going.

• 16:16Molly O'Shea?

  That's hilarious. Um, I'll put this right back.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 16:21Molly O'Shea?

  So what were some of the biggest lessons? You spent nearly a decade at Expedia. What were the biggest lessons from there?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  So for me, uh, it's supply, supply, supply.

• 16:31Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Right? So at Expedia, uh, obviously we're a consumer company, but what's most important is the inventory of hotels that you've got, the pricing of hotels that you've got available. Uh, and that's certainly something that we see at Uber. I mean, again, you think that you wanna add consumers, you wanna add audience to Uber, but what it's about is getting as many cars as possible, signing up as many grocers and restaurants as possible. And when you build out the best supply, then consumers show up because we make it easy and we make it worth your time and worth your dollar.

• 17:03Molly O'Shea?

  I think you're pretty humble. 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.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Almost 10 billion, yeah.

• 17:14Molly O'Shea?

  So did you have to rewrite your brain? Like, how did you, how did you come in and, and do this amazing turnaround? What were the key?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  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, uh, the culture, et cetera. But the team had built a good business in terms of demand and the brand and our presence globally. So while things were not easy.

• 17:42Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  I kinda was standing on the shoulders of giants and this was an incredible brand. And for me, I got to bring in some of the new team and then kind of continue some of the old team together and build on the foundation. That we already had. The fact is that Uber was incredibly popular. Uh, we really focused on supply. We focused on safety as well. Because both our drivers and our riders want to feel safe. Uh, and then once we got to Uber Eats and started building that cross-platform uh, relationship. You know, we compete with lots of people, but most of our competitors are monoline. 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.

• 18:27Molly O'Shea?

  Do you think eats will surpass rides at some point?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  God, you're asking me to like choose between my favorite children.

• 18:35Molly O'Shea?

  I will say I order about three to four salads a day and maybe two rides. So.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  It's for you. It looks like it's a passion. I mean, the two are essentially the same size. I would say that if eats was just about food. I'd say rides would would be bigger, but actually eats now, it's grocery and we're wiring up like every other local business. I wouldn't be surprised if eats is bigger than rides 10 years from now.

• 18:58Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. So what did you learn from Barry Diller?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Uh, I learned so much uh, from Barry Diller, but you know, one of the things that I learned from him is that I'm comfortable going against the grain. You know, Barry was the ultimate counterpuncher. He kind of took on AB, you know, ABC, NBC, CBS. Uh, you didn't grow up with him, but a lot of people grew grew up with him and he he built Fox, which was a new uh, a new product. I've always been comfortable going as against the grain and it's one of the things that encouraged me to join Uber. From the outside, things looked really, really difficult. Uh, but we got in there and uh, at first there was, you know, climbing uphill. Uh, but the desire to go against the grain was something that I learned from him.

• 19:43Molly O'Shea?

  I listened to a couple interviews that you did and seeking truth and getting to answers seems to be one of the leaders and and how you get to products faster, innovations faster. Where did that come from?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Uh, that came from Barry as well. So he uh, he actually met me when I was an analyst at an investment bank. He like, he wanted to see the person building the model and and you know, the. What I find is that as you move up in organizations, 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 a 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, uh, product members, two, three, four levels down, we jam, no decks, really talk about what's going on. And I'm very, very honest with them in terms of what our challenges are like.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  I don't talk corporate speak to them. Everyone has a pretty good BS meter wherever you are. And if a senior member of the team is BSing his team, 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 and then be a truth seeker as well.

• 21:02Molly O'Shea?

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• 21:44Molly O'Shea?

  What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included. And before you invest, you can even back test your idea against the S and P 500. So you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. And beyond generated assets, Public lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto, all in one place. 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, paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures. In the description. Enterprise AI runs on Merge, the AI infra platform for integrations, agent tooling, and model orchestration, so your teams ship product, not plumbing.

• 22:26Molly O'Shea?

  Mistral, Dropbox, and Drata already trust Merge in production. Start building at merge.dev. 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/sorcery. That's D E E L dot com slash sorcery. You mentioned how AI is helping inform product decisions. How else is AI impacting the business and operations? Whether it is teams, communications, or the next era of Uber?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  So it's like changing how we build in every single way. One of the cool things about Uber is that we've always been comfortable with a probabilistic world. You know, most companies are kind of, they want certainty, et cetera. But while you can get certainty in your digital life, you know, with an app, you build the interactions, et cetera. 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, et cetera. So there's all kinds of uncertainty that happens in the real world. And we have been built on top of that. So everything that we build has been algorithmic in nature.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Your pricing, your matching, your ease feed, et cetera. Now, it went from very simple algorithms to deep learning algorithms. And now, obviously, to much larger foundation models. So for persons like culturally, companies are often uncomfortable with uncertainty. We live in uncertainty because the real world can punch you in the face sometimes, right? All kinds of things can go wrong. And so approaching with this probabilistic mindset of what outcomes can be is really important in terms of driving our culture. We've had a leg up because we've been, we've been.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Building algorithmically, but our developers are all using Claude and actually Codex is pretty cool as well. Okay. And developing, we're seeing the number of diffs per developer go go up. We've seen the number of uh lines per diff go up as well. So there's a lot of input going in and there's, there's a lot of productivity coming out uh from our engineers, all the tools. If you're doing a code review, et cetera. We have agents doing code reviews, but we also want to make sure that a person looks at the code reviews. A lot of the debugging that goes on, understanding where all the services are. People used to kind of go hunt and click. Yeah. Within the system, as you can imagine, our system is very, very complex.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Now agents can do that for you. So the way that we build has completely changed. Uh, we're working to change our customer service as well, uh, to have agents, uh, digital agents first help our human agents and then our human agents start to train AI models as well. And it's interesting there, you know, I think a lot of the approaches to building AIs have been kind of a surface approach. Right. Optimize ten or twenty percent of the process. We're trying to go ground up at first principles. So originally when we were trying to train our AI agents, we were like training them on the policies that we have. If you're an Uber one member and your delivery is ten minutes late, what do we do over the ETA, et cetera?

• 25:53Speaker 01

  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 to the right outcomes. Now with our agents, we can train them on what's my goal? My goal is to make Molly, who's an Uber one member, you know, a happy customer. And so the agents themselves can now reason around the outcome that you're going after. And what we're seeing is really, really promising. And then of course, lots of consumer interactions. So you can. Put a shopping list, speak a shopping list, you can, you can take a picture of the shopping list that you scribbled together. You can take a picture of, uh, you know, piece of lasagna. We, we did the demo.

• 26:32Molly O'Shea?

  I saw that. That was great. You got even the basil in there.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. And like, we build a shopping list and, and you, it, it makes it incredibly easy. So all of these really cool products are coming out on market. Some of them are gonna hit, uh, some of them aren't, but we really believe in being aggressive and experimenting at putting it out to the real world.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Really watching what the results are and then iterating from there.

• 26:58Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think about this new trend of headless companies?

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:01Molly O'Shea?

  Like Salesforce just made that announcement that they're pretty much gonna become an API.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, so I think that it's going to be part of the interaction, right? We will, uh, work with an OpenAI so that an OpenAI agent can essentially get an Uber for you as well. But we also want to be that front end and we want to have people come to Uber and 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 or it's actually through our apps and through our services.

• 27:35Molly O'Shea?

  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 Zooks partnership.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Yes, very excited about that.

• 27:46Molly O'Shea?

  That was amazing. So what's going on with AVs? How is Uber getting involved?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  So we believe we have a platform strategy with AVs. 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 Zooks or it's a WeRide. The fact is that the AI ecosystem is incredibly healthy and only accelerating. There are a number of companies that are get, 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 gonna be great for society. We want to help those companies get to market. So for example, we partner with, uh, Waymo in Austin, Atlanta. You might get, uh, hooked up with a human driver or you might get connected to a Waymo driver.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  We're launching with Zooks, uh, Wave, uh, WeRide, many other partners. So we are helping the AV ecosystem thrive and ultimately scale.

• 28:44Molly O'Shea?

  Amazing. So I guess taking a step back, what are your biggest misconceptions about tech today?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  So I think the biggest misconception I think comes to AI. I think the public is really worried about what AI means. This the fears of job displacement are real and the fact is no one knows what those outcomes are going to be. But I think to the average consumer, you know, AI is cool. Chat GPT is awesome. I'm on it constantly. I'm coding with Claude, et cetera, but I'm not the typical consumer. We need to bring out these AI products and surprise and delight consumers every day so that they see AI working for them, 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. But it's going to be even cooler for the general population.

• 29:37Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, I have to ask, how do you get your Uber rating up?

• 29:41Speaker 01

  It's simple.

• 29:41Molly O'Shea?

  What is your Uber rating?

• 29:42Speaker 01

  So my Uber rating is like four eight three. I gotta get to four nine.

• 29:48Molly O'Shea?

  Brooke and I were comparing ours.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  What's yours?

• 29:51Molly O'Shea?

  Four point eight six.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  All right, so you're better than I am.

• 29:54Molly O'Shea?

  Five, yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  So what I'm doing is make sure I'm on time.

• 29:59Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  And then the thing is, I'm on the phone a lot, so now I'm asking permission from my Uber driver. Hey, is it okay if I take a call? None of them have ever said no yet, so.

• 30:09Molly O'Shea?

  Do they know who you are?

• 30:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:19Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, so what are the other tips?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  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, you know, self-serving and helping our drivers.

• 30:30Molly O'Shea?

  How much should you tip?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  I I tip a lot. I'm a good, I'm a good tipper.

• 30:34Molly O'Shea?

  Like two hundred percent? What are we talking about?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  You know, for for like a thirty dollar ride, I'll tap tip ten fifteen bucks. You know, it's it's not bad. And then don't slam the door. You know, but I think the most important is be on time. Our drivers, time is money. That's why they're on the platform, flexibility, et cetera. So being on time is is the biggest tip, but you have to give me tips because your rating is better than mine.

• 30:59Molly O'Shea?

  I am just a girl. I don't know. I'm polite.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Are you on the phone or are you like?

• 31:03Molly O'Shea?

  I actually am. I was like, I don't know why my rating is that high. I get into the Uber. I post most, by the way, I post most of my interviews like on the go.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Are you serious?

• 31:13Molly O'Shea?

  And so I open my laptop. I get on my hotspot. I download the video. I upload it. It's always in an Uber. Can you believe that?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  I love it. Are they like, what are you doing?

• 31:21Molly O'Shea?

  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. And so it's, but then afterwards I'm like, thank you so much.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, something's working for you. Very cool.

• 31:33Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. Okay. So as we wrap up.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:36Molly O'Shea?

  What are you most excited for this year?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  I am most excited for everything that AI can bring and the productivity, the imagination of our developers. What's really cool is like, we have developers in, in Amsterdam, in 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, the power of AI to empower everybody to build like these 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. That's what's really cool.

• 32:15Molly O'Shea?

  Amazing. Thank you so much, Dara.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  You bet. Good seeing you.

• 32:18Molly O'Shea?

  I have all the things in my hands.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Enjoy your salty.

• 32:20Molly O'Shea?

  Thank you.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  All right, thanks.

• 32:23Molly O'Shea?

  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.