Uber stock drops as bookings guidance disappoints, CEO bets big on robotaxi future

Uber reported Q2 2026 earnings that looked solid on the surface, then watched its stock slide anyway. The culprit wasn’t what happened last quarter. It was what the company said about next quarter. Shares dropped 2-3% in premarket trading after Uber’s Q3 gross bookings guidance came in at a midpoint of $59.25B, just below the $59.33B Wall Street consensus. The numbers behind the noise Uber posted non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.81, roughly in line with analyst expectations. Gross bookings hit $58B for the quarter, a 22% year-over-year increase. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi used the earnings call to pivot attention toward Uber’s autonomous vehicle ambitions, announcing plans to invest more than $10B over the coming years to scale robotaxi services. The company is currently operating AV services across eight markets and wants to be live in more than 15 by the end of 2026. Rather than building its own self-driving tech from scratch, Uber is pursuing a partnership-driven model, with collaborations including Waymo, WeRide, and Wayve. Where crypto meets the autonomous vehicle stack Hivemapper, a Solana-based project, uses its HONEY token to incentivize crowdsourced mapping data. Drivers insta...