Uber Appoints New CFO as Its AV Plans Accelerate

San Francisco: Uber has picked Balaji Krishnamurthy to be its new chief financial officer. He takes over from Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah. Krishnamurthy has worked at Uber for more than six years. Most of that time he helped investors and shared Uber’s plans for self-driving cars.

The choice of Krishnamurthy shows Uber wants to grow in vehicles without drivers. He owns part of Waabi, a company that makes self-driving tech. He knows a lot about Uber’s robotaxi plans. During a meeting about money in January, he said Uber will spend funds on working with self-driving carmakers and on places to charge these cars. He said Uber will make smart choices with its money to be ready for the future of driverless cars.

Uber’s boss, Dara Khosrowshahi, believes robotaxis will create a huge chance worth many trillions of dollars. He thinks driverless cars will make Uber’s service much stronger. He wants Uber to give driverless rides in up to 15 cities by the end of 2026 and to be the biggest driver of AV trips worldwide by 2029.

Uber has now teamed up with at least 20 companies working on self-driving cars. These include Waymo, which runs shared robotaxi trips in Atlanta and Austin. Uber has also joined with WeRide from China, Wayve from the UK, and others. Uber has put money into startups like Nuro and Waabi. Waabi just got $750 million and maybe another $250 million from Uber if it reaches its goals.

In the last few months of 2024, Uber made $14.37 billion in total money. That is 20% more than the year before. Strong growth came from Uber’s food delivery service. Mahendra-Rajah said goodbye after three years at Uber.