Uber — the strategy behind it | Stratrix

Company profile

Industry: Services-Business Services, NEC
Listed: NYSE: UBER
Incorporated: DE
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Fiscal year end: Dec 31

Financials

FY2025

Revenue: $52.0B
Net income: $10.1B
Total assets: $61.8B

Uber — reported revenue, net income and total assets by fiscal year, from SEC filings
Fiscal year	Revenue	Net income	Total assets
FY2025	$52.0B	$10.1B	$61.8B
FY2024	$44.0B	$9.85B	$51.2B
FY2023	$37.3B	$2.16B	$38.7B
FY2022	$31.9B	−$9.14B	$32.1B
FY2021	$17.5B	−$570.0M	$38.8B
FY2020	$11.1B	−$6.77B	$33.3B

Reported fiscal years from SEC filings (10-K) — SEC EDGAR ↗. Stratrix is a strategy publication, not a real-time financial data service.

In depth

Uber's International Expansion and Retreats

After disrupting the taxi industry in the United States, Uber faced a strategic imperative to expand internationally.

Uber's Two-Sided Marketplace

Every two-sided marketplace faces the same existential challenge at launch: riders will not download an app with no drivers, and drivers will not sign up for a platform with no riders.

Decisions on record

11 verified Decision Records on Uber, and the casebook each one belongs to.

Fork date	Decision type	The story	Casebook
2010	Distribution Rebellion	Read the story →	Distribution Rebellion Casebook →
2014	The Pricing Lens	Read the story →	The Pricing Lens Casebook →
2016	Crisis Response	Read the story →	Crisis Response Casebook →
2016	The Counterfactual	Read the story →	The Counterfactual Casebook →
2017	Succession Question	Read the story →	Succession Question Casebook →
2018	The Flywheel	Read the story →	The Flywheel Casebook →
2018	The Fork	Read the story →	The Fork Casebook →
2019	Crisis Response	Read the story →	Crisis Response Casebook →
2020	Adjacency Expansion	Read the story →	Adjacency Expansion Casebook →
2020	Adjacency Expansion	Read the story →	Adjacency Expansion Casebook →
2020	Cannibalization Choice	Read the story →	Cannibalization Choice Casebook →

Run one of these yourself

The decisions Uber faced, as kits you can run.

Each pack takes one of these decisions and gives you the framework, a deck for the room, a model that resolves to one number, and the sourced cases behind it. $499, one-time.

Business ModelThe Pricing Model ChangeWhat does changing how you charge cost before it starts paying?See the pack →Growth & PortfolioThe Adjacency ExpansionWhen does the business next door belong to you?See the pack →Business ModelThe Money MachineWhere does the money actually come from, and who sets the rate it comes in at?See the pack →

The analyses

The Pricing Lens · Business Model

Why Uber Gets Expensive at the Worst Possible Moment

Surge pricing is read as greed: charge more when people are desperate. The data says the opposite. When Uber's surge briefly failed one New Year's Eve, only about a quarter of ride requests got a car. Surge isn't the price gouging you. It's the price doing the one job a fixed fare can't.

The Adjacency · Growth & Portfolio

Uber Eats Was a Lunch Experiment That Got Lucky. Then It Had to Grow Up.

The legend says Uber planned a delivery empire in 2014. It didn't - it ran a lunch-only pilot called UberFRESH. The pandemic handed Eats explosive volume, but its delivery segment was still bleeding $(232)M in adjusted EBITDA at the peak. The profit came later, the hard way.

The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio

Uber Eats Was a Shock Absorber: Mobility Still Out-Earned Delivery $6.1B to $3.9B in 2020

The legend says food delivery rescued Uber when the pandemic killed rides. The numbers say otherwise: Mobility still out-earned Delivery $6.1B to $3.9B in 2020, and Eats lost $873M doing it. It was a shock-absorber, not a savior.

The Money Machine · Business Model

Uber's First Operating Profit Was $1.11 Billion in 2023 — Paper Gains Inflated the Headline

In 2023 Uber reported $1.887 billion in net income and the world called it profitable at last. About a billion of that was paper gains on stock it owns. The number that actually mattered was $1.11 billion in operating income — the first in the company's history.

The Cannibalization Choice · Growth & Portfolio

Uber's Zero-Cash Self-Driving Handoff Was a Controlled Exit From Three Liabilities

Uber poured hundreds of millions a year into self-driving, then handed the whole unit to a rival for zero cash in 2020. The 'fire sale' framing misses the point: it was a controlled exit from three liabilities no CEO could solve at once.

The Counterfactual · Decision Forks

Uber Swapped Its $2 Billion China Cash Bonfire for a Stake That Grew to Nearly $8 Billion

Uber spent roughly $2 billion over two years to hold under 8% of China's ride-hailing market against Didi's 85%. In 2016 it swapped the cash bonfire for an equity stake - one that grew to nearly $8 billion while never getting the antitrust approval that would make it legally final.

Crisis Response · Crisis & Reinvention

Uber's security chief got probation for hiding the 2016 breach, and the CEO the judge called just as culpable walked

Joe Sullivan is called the executive who paid hackers $100,000 and covered up Uber's 2016 breach. The wire-fraud counts tied to that payment were dropped before trial. What he was actually convicted of was obstructing a federal investigation — and he got probation, not prison, while the CEO walked.

The Crisis Response · Crisis & Reinvention

Two Benchmark Partners Ended Uber's CEO Era With a Hand-Delivered Letter at the Ritz-Carlton

The story is that a culture scandal forced Uber's CEO out. The truth: on June 20, 2017, two Benchmark partners hand-delivered a resignation letter at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago. The official report had asked to reallocate his job, not end it.

The Crisis Response · Crisis & Reinvention

Uber Rewrote California Law for $59.5M, Then Lost Unanimously at the UK Supreme Court

Everyone thinks Uber lost the gig-worker war. It didn't — it spent $59.5M to rewrite California law and used arbitration to dissolve a class action into 14,000 stragglers. But where a judge looks past the contract, the fiction collapses: the UK Supreme Court ruled unanimously against it.

The Fork · Decision Forks

Uber Ended the Waymo Trial on Day Five With Stock, Not Cash — 0.34% of the Company

Five days into the federal trial, Uber handed Waymo a 0.34% equity stake called $245 million — but no cash changed hands, and at Uber's own SoftBank valuation the same slice was worth closer to $184 million. Uber admitted nothing. The number was never the point.

The Distribution Rebellion · Boundaries of the Firm

Uber's First Product Was Legal All Along — California Already Exempted Black Cars

The legend says Uber out-smarted a century-old taxi cartel. The truth is plainer: its first product was legal because California already exempted black cars from medallions. The real rule-breaking came later — and it was Lyft, not Uber, that drew first blood.

The Flywheel · Moat & Competition

Uber's Flywheel Spins Beautifully. It Just Doesn't Travel.

Uber drew the flywheel into its own S-1: more drivers, shorter waits, more riders, more drivers. The loop is real. But it spins inside one city at a time - and it lost China, then Southeast Asia, while spending 14 years and billions discovering that a local loop can't compound into a global moat.

The Succession Question · People & Control

Uber Called Its 2017 CEO Vote 'Unanimous.' Two Front-Runners Had Just Destroyed Each Other.

In August 2017 Uber's board named Dara Khosrowshahi CEO and called the vote 'unanimous.' He wasn't even one of the two public finalists days earlier. He won because Immelt and Whitman — the picks of the two warring board factions — took each other out first.