History
In 2009, Garrett Camp, a co-founder of StumbleUpon, came up with the idea to create Uber to make it easier and cheaper to procure direct transportation. Camp and Travis Kalanick had spent $800 hiring a private driver on New Year's Eve, which they deemed excessive, and Camp was also inspired by his difficulty in finding a taxi on a snowy night in Paris. The prototype of the mobile app was built by Camp and his friends, Oscar Salazar and Conrad Whelan, with Kalanick as the "mega advisor" to the company.
In February 2010, Ryan Graves became the first Uber employee; he was named chief executive officer (CEO) in May 2010. In December 2010, Kalanick succeeded Graves as CEO and Graves became the chief operating officer.
Following a beta launch in May 2010, Uber's services and mobile app launched publicly in San Francisco in 2011. Originally, the application only allowed users to hail a black luxury car and the price was approximately 1.5 times that of a taxi. In 2011, the company changed its name from UberCab to Uber after complaints from San Francisco taxicab operators. Kalanick believed that in addition to efficiency, Uber offered elegance because all drivers had fancy black cars. He did not feel that regular cars driven by non-professional drivers would be attractive. Kalanick and his angel investor Jason Calacanis publicly stated in podcasts that the world's first rideshare company (Wingz) was illegal and would not work.
The company's early hires included a nuclear physicist, a computational neuroscientist, and a machinery expert who worked on predicting arrival times for Uber's cars more accurately than Google APIs. In April 2012, Uber launched a service in Chicago, whereby users were able to request a regular taxi or an Uber driver via its mobile app.
In July 2012, Uber introduced UberX, a cheaper option that allowed drivers to use non-luxury vehicles, but still subject to having commercial licenses.
In April 2013, after Wingz, Lyft, and Sidecar obtained licenses to legally operate as rideshare companies, Uber announced that it was going to adopt this model and add regular drivers with personal vehicles to the UberX platform instead of only commercially-licensed vehicles, subject to a background check, insurance, registration, and vehicle standards. Former Uber executive Andrew Chen and Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul credit the volunteer- and donation-based LGBTQ rideshare service Homobiles as their inspiration for enabling regular drivers to offer rideshares.. By December 2013, Uber operated in 65 cities.
In December 2013, USA Today named Uber its tech company of the year.
In August 2014, Uber launched a shared transport service in the San Francisco Bay Area and launched Uber Eats, a food delivery service.
In August 2016, facing tough competition, Uber sold its operations in China to DiDi in exchange for an 18% stake in DiDi. DiDi agreed to invest $1 billion in Uber. Uber had started operations in China in 2014, under the name 优步 (Yōubù).
In 2016, Uber acquired Ottomotto, a self-driving truck company founded by Anthony Levandowski, for $625 million. Levandowski, previously employed by Waymo, allegedly founded Ottomotto using trade secrets he stole from Waymo. Uber settled a lawsuit regarding the use of such intellectual property and reached a deal to use Waymo's technology for its freight transport operations.
In December 2016, Uber acquired Geometric Intelligence and its 15-person staff, which became "Uber AI", a division for researching artificial intelligence and machine learning. Uber AI was shut down in May 2020.
In August 2017, Dara Khosrowshahi, the former CEO of Expedia Group, replaced Kalanick as CEO. Earlier in March 2015, as CEO of Expedia Group, Khosrowshahi had led a multimillion equity investment in Wingz, Inc., the first ridesharing company in the world.
In July 2017, Uber received a five-star privacy rating from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but was harshly criticized by the group in September 2017 for a controversial policy of tracking customers' locations even after a ride ended, forcing the company to reverse its policy.
In February 2018, Uber combined its operations in Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan with those of Yandex Taxi and invested $225 million in the venture. In March 2018, Uber merged its services in Southeast Asia with those of Grab in exchange for a 27.5% ownership stake in Grab.
Between May 2018 and November 2018, Uber offered Uber Rent powered by Getaround, a peer-to-peer carsharing service available to some users in San Francisco.
In November 2018, Uber became a gold member of the Linux Foundation.
In 2018, Uber formed a partnership with Autzu, a San Francisco-based ridesharing company. This collaboration provides Uber drivers with the opportunity to rent electric Tesla on an hourly basis.
In May 2019, Uber became a public company via an initial public offering.
In March and May 2019, the 2019 Lyft and Uber drivers' strikes led by Rideshare Drivers United were in protest of low wages, long hours, working conditions, and lack of benefits.
In the summer of 2019, Uber announced layoffs of 8% of its staff and eliminated the position of COO Barney Harford.
In October 2019, Uber acquired 53% of Cornershop, a provider of grocery delivery services primarily in Latin America. In June 2021, it acquired the remaining 47% interest in Cornershop for 29 million shares of Uber.
After California Assembly Bill 5 (2019) was introduced, Uber announced that it would not comply with the law, then engaged lobbyists and mounted a public opinion campaign to overturn it via a ballot.
Between October 2019 and May 2020, Uber offered Uber Works, a mobile app connecting workers who wanted temporary jobs with businesses in Chicago and Miami.
In January 2020, Uber acquired Careem for $3.1 billion and sold its Indian Uber Eats operations to Zomato.
Also in January 2020, Uber tested a feature that enabled drivers at the Santa Barbara, Sacramento, and Palm Springs airports to set fares based on a multiple of Uber's rates.
In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Uber announced layoffs of over 14% of its workforce.
In June 2020, in its first software as a service partnership, Uber announced that it would manage the on-demand high-occupancy vehicle fleet for Marin Transit, a public bus agency in Marin County, California.
In September 2020, Uber committed to carbon neutrality globally by 2040, and required that, by 2030, in most countries, rides must be offered exclusively in electric vehicles.
In December 2020, Uber acquired Postmates for $2.65 billion.
Also in December 2020, Uber sold its Elevate division, which was developing short flights using VTOL aircraft, to Joby Aviation.
In January 2021, Uber Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), a joint venture minority-owned by SoftBank Vision Fund, Toyota, and Denso that was developing self-driving cars, was sold to Aurora Innovation for $4 billion in equity and Uber invested $400 million into Aurora.
In March 2021, the company moved to a new headquarters on Third Street in Mission Bay, San Francisco, consisting of several 6- and 11-story buildings connected by bridges and walkways.
In October 2021, Uber acquired Drizly, an alcohol delivery service, for $1.1 billion in cash and stock; it was shut down in early 2024.
In January 2022, Uber acquired Australian car-sharing company Car Next Door.
In 2022, more than 124,000 internal documents covering the five-year period from 2012 to 2017 when Uber was run by Travis Kalanick were leaked by Mark MacGann, a lobbyist who "led Uber's efforts to win over governments across Europe, the Middle East and Africa". The documents were leaked to The Guardian and first printed on 10 July 2022 by its Sunday sister The Observer. The documents revealed attempts to lobby Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and George Osborne; how Emmanuel Macron secretly aided Uber lobbying in France, and use of a kill switch during police raids to conceal data.
In February 2023, thousands of drivers for Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash went on strike in the US and UK to protest wages and fees.
The company posted its first operating profit in 2023.
In May 2025, Uber acquired an 85% controlling stake in Trendyol Go, an online meal and grocery delivery business based in Istanbul, for about $700 million in cash. It also acquired DanTaxi, the largest taxi operator in Denmark.
Also in July 2025, Uber invested over $300 million in Lucid Motors and Nuro and announced the purchase of Lucid Gravity vehicles to develop a robotaxi service.
In September 2025, Uber announced the launch of air taxi and seaplane flights in certain markets in partnership with Joby Aviation.
In February 2026, Uber announced the acquisition of SpotHero.
In February 2026, Uber launched the Uber Autonomous Solutions division to handle its operations in robotaxis, self-driving trucks, and sidewalk delivery robots, including software and support services.
In March 2026, Uber agreed to invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian as part of a deal to deploy up to 50,000 robotaxis through 2031. Also in March 2026, Uber partnered with Nvidia to use the Nvidia Drive software in its robotaxis.
In July 2026, Uber agreed to acquire Delivery Hero for $14.8 billion.
In September 2026, Uber announced plans to reduce its workforce by 10% as part of a restructuring aimed at simplifying its management structure and reducing costs. The company said the changes would consolidate teams and management layers and allow it to increase investment in autonomous vehicles. Uber had approximately 34,000 employees at the end of 2025.
