M&M Lion Fund
Small-Fund Portfolio Manager Since 2023, IE Business School & Javeriana Background
Uber's trips could keep growing even without a Waymo partnership because the ride-hail market may expand faster than Waymo takes share. Based on estimated inputs and Waymo's reported fleet plans, every modeled scenario has Uber trips growing, though its US trip share falls from about 73% to 69% by Q4 2028 in the target case. The model excludes take rate, pricing and Uber's AV capex. x.comÂ
Autonomous vehicles will face a harder regulatory path than analysts expect, much as Uber had to fight a decade-long regulatory war just to scale globally. Per a report quoted by @CharlesFLehman, Waymo is hitting political roadblocks in New York City from local politicians, unions and the taxi lobby, and the state walked away from its proposal to allow self-driving taxis. Analysts always overestimate near-term adoption curves. x.comÂ
Uber's network effects could make it the app robotaxi fleets need to keep their cars fully operational. It is one of the best platforms on earth and a five-year buy at today's valuation, with opportunity too compelling to pass up despite shares falling about 25% in the past year on robotaxi fears. Bookings grew 24% last quarter and trailing free cash flow exceeded $10 billion. Waymo and Tesla could choose to bypass Uber; Waymo already runs its own app in most of its cities. x.comÂ
Autonomy could expand the ride market tenfold, giving Uber a long growth runway if it does. That is the true 10x opportunity, like ridesharing's expansion of the taxi market. Uber will be a $1 trillion company by 2035. Improved autonomous-vehicle margins are possible but uncertain. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Uber cannot be owned until its robotaxi strategy and economics are clearer, including whether it stays asset-light or pivots to asset-heavy. Calling it 10 times 2027 free cash flow may be unfair if an asset-heavy pivot sends that cash into capex. Google puts global ridesharing at $150-180 billion in gross bookings a year, reaching $200 billion by decade's end, likely not big enough for Waymo, Tesla and Uber to all win while each spends tens of billions on fleets. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Robotaxis could widen Uber's moat rather than destroy it, because its real advantage is the network matching huge pools of demand with whatever supply is available, not drivers' lack of negotiating power. Robotaxis change the supply but don't eliminate the network. The question is whether Uber becomes the toll road for autonomous mobility, letting Waymo and dozens of competing AV suppliers fight over the economics while Uber owns the customer, demand and dispatch layer. x.comÂ
Uber at about a $160B market cap prices in far too much US autonomous-vehicle risk. AV risk is confined to the top 30-35 US markets, roughly 10-12% of Uber's profits, and is offset by partners such as Lucid-Nuro, Zoox, Wayve and WeRide. US adoption is accelerating across all product lines, and Uber trades 7-8 turns below peers' growth-adjusted multiple, so continued earnings growth alone should re-rate it. Losing Waymo in Atlanta and Austin after January 2028 frees Uber to use more partners. … Show more
Uber looks rather negative because driver reclassification, consumer cutbacks and easy switching threaten its business. Making drivers employees could raise costs and push ride prices up around 40%. Food delivery and comfort rides are cut when budgets tighten; riders switch to Lyft or Bolt for a few euros. Tesla or Waymo could bypass Uber with their own apps, and Google can scale quickly. Despite being a great company, Uber has too many unknowns; it is preferable to stay on the sidelines. x.comÂ
Uber looks cheap at a 7% free-cash-flow yield while growing non-GAAP EPS 25-30% a year. Waymo would need to hurry its autonomous fleet rollout worldwide to catch up. x.comÂ
Tesla's Austin robotaxi rollout looks to have hit an inflection point because activity is scaling rapidly. A RtaxiTracker chart shared by Jason Scharf shows Tesla at 438,000 per week in the week to October 18, versus Waymo's 406,000-per-week Q2 2026 average. Waymo's figure is older and quarterly averaged, so the periods are not directly comparable. x.com x.comÂ
Waymo is becoming the strongest disruptor to Uber and Lyft in US ride-hailing. Autonomous vehicles can compress the cost and margins of human ride-share sharply, and riders pick the cheapest option, where Waymo or Tesla would likely win; a Waymo rival to Uber Eats could do the same to delivery. Per the FT, Waymo is exploring a split from Uber, which only ever served as Google's distribution funnel. The near-term impact is negligible, but long term both look cooked in the US unless they act. … Show more
Uber's asset-light platform makes it a direct winner of autonomous driving, because AV operators can't match its network's dispatch efficiency. AV rides on Uber grew over 10x year over year in Q1 2026, with launches in up to 15 cities by end-2026, and Waymo partners rather than competes. Its 200M+ monthly users cut empty miles, and human drivers add elastic capacity. It made about $9.8B of 2025 free cash flow, Q1 bookings rose 21% to $53.7B, and buying Delivery Hero could lift bookings to $160B. … Show more
