Uber has just finished its earnings call, reporting a strong Q3 and flagged a handful of delivery, AI, and partner moves that I noted.
1/ Orders & money (Delivery). Gross Bookings $23.3B (+25% YoY) – Revenue $4.48B (+29%) – Segment Adjusted EBITDA $921M (+47%). Interestingly, Grocery & Retail is approaching a ~$12B gross bookings run-rate and is growing faster than restaurant delivery.
2/ What changed this quarter (Delivery). Management called out a “standout” Delivery quarter tied to better consumer experience, rising membership penetration, and stronger contribution from Grocery & Retail – plus incremental help from Trendyol Go by Uber Eats in Turkey. Trendyol Go was highlighted for its marketplace tech and merchant tools as Uber combines its operating playbook with TGo’s local expertise.
3/ Local commerce as an on-ramp. Grocery and retail is feeding the main app, not just adding volume. 7% of Delivery first-time users now start via G&R (!), and once they do, monthly platform frequency rises about 27% (4.8 to 6.1). Product work here leans on AI-in-the-loop: intelligent search, mixed feeds that cross-sell (see the picture), and merchant-facing APIs that suggest replacements to cut defects.
4/ Membership and cross-platform pull. Uber is pushing from single transactions toward lifetime engagement. Where users engage across businesses, spend is roughly 3x higher and retention about 35% better than single-product users.
5/ Merchant growth engine – and why POS people should care. Uber says it now serves 1.2M+ merchants and paid out over $14B to them in Q3. Ads and merchant-funded offers are up 50%+ and positioned as incremental sales drivers. Uber also announced an expanded partnership with Toast (!) that makes Uber Eats the preferred marketplace partner for Toast restaurants – globally – with a focus on faster onboarding through deeper integration.
6/ AI, closer to the edge. Under the hood, more than 10M ML predictions per second continue to price, dispatch, and route; on the surface, Uber is building genAI agents for multi-step requests and more automated, personalized support. For merchants, new AI features analyze reviews, auto-fill menu descriptions, and enhance food photos; in G&R, AI sits in the shopper workflow with replacement suggestions that reduce defects.
7/ Platform. Uber framed autonomy as hybrid network plumbing – human drivers plus AVs. The NVIDIA partnership includes software, a joint data factory, and fleet tooling; Uber also guided to being live with AV deployments in at least 10 cities by end of 2026.