To Ark Invest, Tesla is the biggest AI player out there. Cathie Wood, the CEO of Ark Invest, loves the company, not as an EV leader, but as an artificial intelligence pioneer. AI is what makes Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) possible, and the more people use FSD, the more data Tesla (TSLA) -) will have to improve its models.
Add to that the fact that Tesla chief Elon Musk plans on using tweets to train the algorithms from his new AI company and it seems that Wood may not be far off. The AI game is one about data, both in quality and in extreme quantities. And Musk has access to a lot of data.
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Aside from his dreams of building a robotaxi fleet and perfecting Tesla's FSD technology, Musk has big plans to turn X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, into an everything app.
Though Musk might seem like the one in the best position to pull all these lofty goals off, Tesla, along with its future robotaxi business and the super app, have a bit of a dark horse competitor in the form of Uber, the ride-share company.
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Uber (UBER) -) reported an operating profit Aug. 1 -- for the first time in the company's history -- of more than $300 million for the quarter. And speaking to Bloomberg, the company's CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that, though it's taking some time to perfect, the company is "very bullish" on autonomous technology.
"One of the unique aspects of Uber is, not only are we global, not only are we the largest platform with the biggest audience, but we operate in every significant vertical for autonomous: passenger vehicles, delivery and freight," Khosrowshahi said. The company, whose platform brings in more than 130 million users each month, has partnered with leaders in each of those verticals, including Waymo and Aurora.
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Khosrowshahi did not say when he expects Uber to begin providing autonomous options. But in lieu of a self-driving car, he did say that Uber is exploring several AI applications across Uber's business, all designed to enhance productivity and efficiency across the company.
"The datasets that we work with are the largest data sets globally, and the more data we have the smarter we get. We are now focused more on productivity applications," Khosrowshahi said, adding that the company plans on implementing AI agents to help customers and drivers alike.
An AI "Uber bot," he said, is currently in the works, though "it's a very small part of the AI ecosystem at Uber."
On AI, self-driving and robtaxis, Uber might be a much closer competitor to Musk than it seems. But the company's platform has also positioned Uber to be a competitor in the currently nascent sector of the super app, something Musk has been fervently working on since acquiring Twitter last year.
"We are leading in terms of building out a super app. In the West, I do think Uber is the closest to achieving that super app," Khosrowshahi said. "We want to be that operating system for your everyday life. I think that we are steadily moving along the super app path, which is why we're gaining position against the competitors."
