Uber

Customers spent 59.8 billion dollars through Uber this quarter, up 20 percent from a year ago. This is the fifth quarter in a row of growth that fast. People took 4.1 billion trips, and delivery is the quiet star: it grew 22 percent to 28.5 billion dollars and is now almost as big as the ride business.

Uber is turning its growth into real money. Its core profit jumped 38 percent to 2.3 billion dollars, and it had 2.5 billion dollars in spare cash left after paying its bills and buying equipment. Uber also expects next quarter's profit per share to grow 34 to 39 percent from a year earlier, so the momentum looks set to carry into 2027.

Uber's official profit fell 92 percent to 512 million dollars. Last year's number was puffed up by a huge one time tax benefit, and this quarter Uber also lost 476 million dollars on stakes it owns in other companies. Revenue grew just 10 percent to 14.8 billion dollars, half the pace of customer spending, partly because Uber changed how some trips count toward revenue.

Uber expects about 700 fully driverless cars on its app by the end of this year and over 2,000 in 2027. That keeps Uber in the game, but building out self driving fleets takes a lot of money and patience. And if riders start booking robot cars straight through someone else's app, Uber's biggest advantage, its giant network, gets a lot smaller.