{"slug": "uber-coo-says-there-s-a-downside-to-being-at-the-top", "title": "Uber COO says there's a downside to being at the top", "summary": "Uber Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macdonald said on the 20VC podcast that the company's scale—nearly $250 billion in annualized gross bookings—makes it harder to justify new business bets, as the core business consumes organizational resources. Macdonald noted autonomous vehicles are Uber's largest investment area, with over $10 billion committed, and the company announced a drone-delivery partnership with Zipline targeting one million daily deliveries by 2029.", "body_md": "At the top, it's hard to know where else to go.\n\nIn an interview on Harry Stebbings' 20VC podcast published on Monday, [Andrew Macdonald](https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai-token-spending-harder-justify-2026-5), Uber's chief operating officer and president, said that finding new businesses can be challenging when the company's core business is already so large.\n\nCall it the \"classic [innovator's dilemma](https://www.businessinsider.com/takeaways-harvard-business-school-clayton-christensen-the-innovators-dilemma-disruption),\" he said.\n\n\"The thing you've already built is so big that it just swallows up your organizational capacity to do anything else,\" Macdonald said. \"And even if you're able to stand up other businesses, it's impossible for those businesses to get the resourcing, attention, distribution, marketing dollars, engineering capacity — whatever it is, it just gets swallowed up by the hole.\"\n\nMacdonald said Uber is close to $250 billion in gross bookings on an annualized basis. At that scale, he said, a new product would need a plausible path to becoming a multibillion-dollar business before it's compelling enough for the company.\n\n\"It just actually constrains your thinking a little bit,\" Macdonald said.\n\nUber is operating at a formidable scale. The company reported $58 billion in gross bookings in its most recent quarter and $14.2 billion in revenue. Uber said the platform averaged 208 million monthly active platform consumers.\n\nThe company is still making big bets.\n\n[Autonomous vehicles](https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-autonomous-vehicles-driverless-cancelled-project-catching-up-waymo-tesla-2026-3), Macdonald said, are now Uber's \"largest single area of investment.\" The company has partnered with a slew of robotaxi platforms, including Alphabet's Waymo, and launched Uber Autonomous Solutions earlier this year — a suite of services aimed at helping AV companies commercialize their tech. The Financial Times estimated in an April report that the company has committed more than $10 billion to investments in AV companies and spending on robotaxi fleets.\n\nOn Monday, Uber also unveiled a partnership with [drone-delivery startup Zipline](https://www.businessinsider.com/drone-delivery-accelerating-test-programs-pilot-markets-texas-wing-zipline-2025-10) to allow Uber Eats customers to receive drone deliveries starting later this year. The companies said they were targeting one million daily drone deliveries by the end of 2029.\n\nThe partnership includes a \"strategic investment\" in Zipline by Uber.\n\nMacdonald said on the podcast that the company tries to incubate fledgling ideas through a program called \"Growth Bets,\" in which Uber dedicates employees to new projects rather than having people manage existing businesses simultaneously.\n\nEven then, Macdonald said big companies throwing a ton of money at new projects often move more slowly than startups, as people get \"fat on the resources.\"\n\nThe upside for Uber, he said, is that if a new idea works, the company can put it in front of more than 200 million people.\n\nNot a bad head start.\n\n*Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at *__lloydlee@businessinsider.com__* or Signal at lloydlee.71. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our *__guide to sharing information securely__*.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/uber-coo-says-there-s-a-downside-to-being-at-the-top", "canonical_source": "https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-innovation-new-businesses-growth-autonomous-vehicles-andrew-macdonald-2026-8", "published_at": "2026-08-18 00:44:21+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-18 01:11:37.537454+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["autonomous-vehicles", "ai-products", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Uber", "Andrew Macdonald", "Harry Stebbings", "20VC", "Waymo", "Alphabet", "Zipline", "Uber Eats"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/uber-coo-says-there-s-a-downside-to-being-at-the-top", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/uber-coo-says-there-s-a-downside-to-being-at-the-top.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/uber-coo-says-there-s-a-downside-to-being-at-the-top.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/uber-coo-says-there-s-a-downside-to-being-at-the-top.jsonld"}}