Co-founded by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp in 2009 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Uber’s early investors include Jeff Bezos, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Benchmark Capital and Google. Uber’s business model laid the foundation for the platform economy framework, and its strategies for rapid expansion — forming the Uber playbook — continue to be used by platform-apps across the globe.
Between 2013 and 2017, Uber expanded its operations to over 80 countries. In spite of scaling back operations since 2017 due to commercial, legal and political challenges, Uber continues to operate in around 70 countries and over 15,000 cities worldwide. The global scale of Uber’s operations drove its valuation from $60 million in 2011 to $51 billion by 2015. At its IPO in 2019, a decade after its launch, Uber was valued at $82 billion. The company’s current value is around $180 billion. Under current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber reported its first annual operating profit of $1.1 billion in 2023. In the first quarter of 2025, Uber reported an estimate of 170 million monthly consumers, over 3 billion trips, and over 7.8 million drivers and couriers who work for the platform as ‘independent contractors’.
In 2022, a leaked database of Uber’s activities between 2013 and 2017 — the Uber Files — was published by The Guardian, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other media outlets. The files, leaked by former Uber executive Mark MacGann, revealed the aggressive lobbying and deregulation strategies pursued by the company.
