Uber expands into travel and AI data collection

Uber has spent the last year quietly pushing beyond the two businesses most people associate with it — ride-hailing and delivery — into travel, financial services, and data collection. Chief Product Officer Sachin Kansal frames the shift around travel in particular: “Travel really is, in my opinion, the third leg of the stool — we had rides, then we added eats, and now we are adding travel.”

The travel push centers on hotel bookings through a partnership with Expedia, aimed at the 1.5 billion trips that happen on the Uber platform every year outside a user’s home city, according to Kansal. That expansion sits alongside continued growth in Uber One, the company’s membership program:

• 51 million members
• accounting for roughly half of bookings
• 10% cash back as credit on hotel transactions — for example, $100 back on a $1,000 transaction
• two to three delivery orders needed to break even on the monthly membership fee

On autonomous vehicles, Uber says it is not trying to become an L4 autonomy provider — Level 4 autonomous driving, where a vehicle handles all driving tasks under specific conditions without human intervention. Instead, per Kansal, the company is focused on building the infrastructure to work with multiple autonomy players. Its six-month-old AV Labs unit is separately equipping vehicles with sensors to collect driving data, deployed through fleet partners rather than Uber’s regular driver network. That positions Uber as a data layer for partners such as Waymo, with which it also competes directly in some cities.

Uber is also selling labeled data and audio transcription services to generative AI companies, drawing on its earner base, according to Kansal. He was explicit that drivers are not recording conversations with riders while on trips for this work: there’s no conversation being recorded as part of that while they’re on a ride, he said, explaining that earners instead get paid to transcribe audio or provide operational know-how when they are not actively driving or delivering.

Why it matters

Uber is expanding beyond its core ride-hailing and delivery businesses into travel, financial services, and autonomous-vehicle data collection through its new AV Labs unit, while navigating an increasingly complex relationship with partners like Waymo.