Uber Stock Climbed on Robotaxi Hopes. But It Doesn't Own the Autonomous Cars Driving Its Expansion.

Shares of ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) have rebounded recently as investors warm to the idea that robotaxis could become a major new growth driver. Shares are up about 7% over the last month and 5% in the last week alone. At close to $76 as of this writing, though, the stock still sits about 25% below its 52-week high near $102.

The recent optimism toward the stock is easy to understand. What's harder to pin down, however, is what Uber actually owns in the autonomous race.

Here is the part the robotaxi excitement tends to gloss over: Uber doesn't build the cars, doesn't write the self-driving software, and doesn't own the vehicles carrying its riders. Its plan is to be the app that books the trip, whoever's autonomous car shows up. That asset-light approach could be Uber's biggest advantage in autonomy -- or its biggest vulnerability, depending on how the next few years unfold.

Image source: Getty Images.

A platform, not a fleet

Uber's pitch to investors and autonomous-car manufacturers is about aggregation.

It has reportedly signed up about 30 autonomous partners -- robotaxi developers, delivery-bot makers, and self-driving trucking firms -- and wants to be the marketplace where that capacity meets demand. The early traction backs up the idea: Uber recently said autonomous trips on its platform grew about tenfold over the past year, and management is targeting driverless service in up to 15 cities by the end of 2026.

"We get to work with everybody in the ecosystem," Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told Fast Company in a June interview, pointing to a network that handles more than 40 million trips a day. The logic is that with that much demand, Uber can keep a partner's expensive cars busy in ways a single operator running its own app can't.

And the core business gives the pitch weight. In the first quarter of 2026, Uber's revenue rose 14% year over year to $13.2 billion, gross bookings climbed 25% to $53.7 billion, and trips grew 20% to 3.64 billion. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) rose 33% to about $2.5 billion.

A network this large is exactly what a robotaxi operator with idle cars might want to plug into.

But the biggest fleet doesn't need Uber

The catch is who actually owns the robotaxis on the road today. Alphabet's Waymo is the largest operator by far, running a fleet of more than 3,000 driverless cars and delivering around half a million paid rides a week, with a goal of 1 million by the end of 2026. And Waymo mostly routes those riders through its own app, not Uber's. And the two are now drifting apart -- Waymo still runs on Uber's platform in a couple of markets.

Tesla, meanwhile, is building a robotaxi service on cars and software it controls end-to-end. Uber's answer is to buy its way into the supply of its own. The company has reportedly committed more than $10 billion to autonomous vehicles. That includes a deal for at least 35,000 robotaxis built on electric vehicles from Lucid Group and equipped with Nuro's self-driving system, plus an arrangement for as many as 50,000 autonomous vehicles from Rivian.

But these arrangements will take time to start making a difference for Uber. The Lucid-Nuro robotaxi service is slated for a public launch later this year. And the Rivian fleet isn't expected to start deployments until 2028.

Meanwhile, Uber's valuation leaves little room for slip-ups. Its forward price-to-earnings ratio of 24 isn't expensive, but it's not cheap either. In other words, it isn't extreme for a company growing gross bookings above 20%, but it's high enough that it arguably does assume the partner-based autonomy strategy adds value rather than erodes it.

So does Uber's asset-light bet make it a robotaxi winner, or leave it dependent on the rivals that build the cars? Probably something in between. Sure, the platform model could prove durable if autonomy fragments across many operators that all need Uber's demand to fill seats. But it could suffer if a handful of owners like Waymo reach the scale to run their own networks and keep the economics. For now, Uber is paying up to ensure it has cars to fall back on -- a sensible hedge, but also a quiet admission that aggregating other companies' robotaxis may not be the durable advantage implied by the rising share price.

Daniel Sparks has clients with positions in Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Tesla, and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.