Top Fund Manager Says Doubting Uber's Driverless Future Is 'Like Betting Against Amazon'

The Future Fund Managing Partner Gary Black sees Uber Technologies UBER continuing to be the largest ride-hailing player globally in the future if it offers autonomous rides as well.

What Happened: Black said in a post on social media platform X that he expects Uber will offer autonomous rides as an option on its app in addition to other available options such as Black, X, and Comfort.

“With more drivers and cars than any other network, why wouldn't UBER remain the largest ride-hailing player in the world as long as it offers driverless? It would be like betting against Amazon just because individual manufacturers can now sell direct,” Black said.

“It couldn't be any clearer.”

“Those predicting the imminent demise of Uber would be like predicting Amazon couldn't survive once all manufacturers offered their goods directly to consumers, bypassing Amazon. That of course didn't happen,” he added.

Why It Matters: Uber already has partnerships in place with Alphabet Inc‘s Waymo. Waymo is eyeing offering members of the public in Atlanta autonomous rides exclusively through Uber starting later this year. This collaboration will see Uber managing and dispatching a fleet of Waymo's fully autonomous, all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday that the company will start testing autonomous ride-hailing service in Texas in June with vehicles deployed with its full self-driving (FSD) driver assistance technology.

Musk has previously said that Tesla's robotaxi fleet will function like a combination of Airbnb and Uber. While a certain portion of the fleet will be owned by Tesla, individual customers can also add or subtract their vehicles to the robotaxi fleet at will. As for riders, they can summon a car using the Tesla App, Musk said, putting Tesla as a competitor to Uber.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has previously said that the company would be interested in working with Tesla’s autonomous vehicles as well if the latter is interested.

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