New York, Jan 9, 2026, 14:42 (EST) — Regular session
- Uber shares down about 2.8% at $85.16 in afternoon trade, after dipping below $85
- CES self-driving tie-ups, including a Nvidia platform linked to a Lucid-Nuro-Uber robotaxi effort, keep autonomy in the spotlight
- Next up: Fed decision Jan. 27-28; Uber’s quarterly report date still unconfirmed, with Wall Street looking to early February
Uber Technologies Inc shares fell nearly 3% on Friday as CES-driven talk of driverless taxis stirred fresh debate over when the technology pays off at scale. The stock was down 2.8% at $85.16 in afternoon trade, after earlier slipping to $84.97.
The move matters because Uber is one of the clearest public-market proxies for robotaxis — driverless taxi services — without betting on a single carmaker. Bigger autonomous fleets could mean more rides flowing through Uber’s app, but they also raise questions over who controls pricing and who captures the economics.
At the CES show in Las Vegas, Nvidia rolled out a next-generation self-driving platform that will be used in a robotaxi alliance announced by Lucid Group, Nuro and Uber, Reuters reported. Ozgur Tohumcu, a general manager at Amazon Web Services, called generative AI — software that can create text and images — a “big accelerant” for development, while Infineon CEO Jochen Hanebeck warned against “market fantasy” and said he did not see “a tsunami” flowing toward Level 5, or full self-driving without a human minder. (Reuters)
The autonomy debate is showing up in sellside work, too. In a Jan. 8 Morgan Stanley podcast, analyst Brian Nowak said autonomous availability could rise from about 15% of the U.S. urban population at end-2025 to over 30% by end-2026, adding it is “really important” that ride-hailing platforms such as Uber and Lyft keep adding partners. (Morgan Stanley)
Lyft shares were down about 1.4% and food-delivery platform DoorDash fell about 3.8% in the same session.
The stock move also came on a macro-heavy day. U.S. payrolls rose 50,000 in December while the unemployment rate dipped to 4.4%, data that kept investors focused on the Federal Reserve’s Jan. 27-28 meeting and the path of rates in 2026. (Reuters)
But robotaxi timelines remain hard to model. Rollouts hinge on state-by-state rules, safety data and the cost of the vehicles, and early deployments could stay smaller — and less profitable — than the CES headlines suggest. Any wobble in consumer spending can also show up quickly in ride demand and delivery volumes.
Investors now look to Uber’s fourth-quarter results for clues on demand and margins, and for any detail on how autonomous partners would plug into its marketplace. Uber has not confirmed the date, but Wall Street Horizon lists Feb. 4 as an unconfirmed report date before the market opens. (Wall Street Horizon)
