Dara Khosrowshahi
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Uber plans to add train, bus and flight bookings to its UK app
Uber is planning to add travel booking via flights, trains and more in the UK this year to expand its ride-hailing business.
Uber CEO says you'll eventually be able to pay with cryptocurrency
Uber users will eventually be able to pay for rides using Bitcoin, said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
Uber CEO says his company can't hire all of its drivers in California
"We can't go out and hire 50,000 people overnight," the executive said during an interview.
Uber warns of temporary California shut down if it has to reclassify drivers
Uber CEO says the company may suspend service in California if the court doesn't rule in its favor.
Uber founder Travis Kalanick is leaving the company's board
Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is taking another step back from the company he helped found. On Tuesday, Uber announced that Kalanick plans to resign from its board of directors on December 31st. Moving forward, Kalanick plans to "focus on his new business and philanthropic endeavors."
Uber's first safety review contains thousands of sexual assault reports
Over the last few years Uber -- among other ridesharing services -- has been accused of failing to respond adequately to reports of sexual assault and other crimes linked to those on its platform. Now the company has released its first safety report (PDF), along with a number of notes about steps it's taking to make things safer for passengers and drivers. The nearly 6,000 reports of sexual abuse Uber said it has received over 2017 and 2018, or the 19 fatal physical assaults jump out of the pages of the lengthy report. While Uber correctly notes that even these are from just a fraction of a percent of the 2.3 billion trips taken during that period, each one is devastating for those involved. While the report, commissioned two years ago by current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, also accurately describes the problems as pervasive throughout society, it doesn't extend to an explanation of why methods for reporting and dealing with these issues is something that's happening after billions of trips, instead of before.
Uber lays off employees from Eats, self-driving cars and other teams
Uber has cut around 350 more employees across several of its divisions. The company said it's the "last wave of a process" that saw layoffs in marketing, then product and engineering over the last few months. This time around, Uber has laid off members of the Eats, performance marketing, Advanced Technologies Group (the self-driving cars unit) and recruiting departments, along with its global rides and platform teams. In total, the job cuts account for around one percent of Uber's workforce.
Uber executive reshuffling drops its COO and CMO
In an email that went out to employees on Friday, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that because of progress made over the last two years, he now has more time to oversee day-to-day operations. Post-IPO, that will mean some reassigning of roles, and as a part of that, Chief Operating Officer Barney Harford and Chief Marketing Officer Rebecca Messina are both stepping down. Neither will be replaced directly, instead the heads of Uber's core businesses (Rides and Eats) will report directly to the CEO, while the marketing, communications and policy departments will be combined into one, all under former VP of communications and public policy Jill Hazelbaker. What impact will this have on you pressing a button and getting something delivered or hopping into a stranger's car for a ride? We don't know yet, but now that the company is public at least a few things are going to change.
Uber's first post-IPO earnings report shows another $1 billion lost
Uber's first earnings report as a public company shows that while its revenue is higher than last year; the company is still hemorrhaging money. Still, there's no doubt that the company is getting bigger. The company earned $3.1 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2019, a 20 percent increase from the same period last year. But its losses were considerable; the company reported a net loss of $1.1 billion.
Uber files for its IPO and faces the past
Ten years after the company was founded, Uber is finally ready to go public. The company revealed its S-1 filing for an IPO this afternoon, and as such opened up more information to everyone about its finances and concerns going forward. Going through the document, a lot of those concerns involve the past, particularly in 2017 when a series of revelations about its corporate culture, treatment of drivers and passengers, and other misdeeds resulted in the exit of CEO Brian Kalanick. According to Uber, it has some 91 million monthly active users who've either taken a ride or received an Uber Eats delivery. That number came from Q4 of 2018, and is up 35 percent from the previous year, with some 3.9 million drivers, and 1.5 billion trips in the quarter. Uber also gave some insight on its self-driving car plans, saying "Along the way to a potential future autonomous vehicle world, we believe that there will be a long period of hybrid autonomy, in which autonomous vehicles will be deployed gradually against specific use cases while Drivers continue to serve most consumer demand." As usual for an S-1, the list of risks acknowledges everything that could go wrong for the company including increased regulation, drop in reputation or falling behind competitors. For Uber that includes not just the seedier aspects of its past mentioned above, but also the issue of how to try and achieve profitability while maintaining prices customers have come to expect and compensation that works for drivers. This is expected to be one of the biggest tech IPOs ever, and comes just a month after its main competitor Lyft listed its shares on the open market, revealing over 30 million riders and just under two million drivers.
