“While operating a ridesharing network may seem simple, our technology hides enormous complexity. We support approximately one million rides per hour (and our) marketplace technology … makes over 10 million predictions per second. Or even more mundane: We processed more than 25 million lost items in the last year alone,” said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Khosrowshahi spoke to analysts on a conference call this week after Uber reported record quarterly profits of $1 billion – with drivers and couriers earning a new high of $17.9 billion in the second quarter.

This is an impressive turnaround for Uber after the company warned in the economically difficult year of 2022 that investor pressure to deliver profits was increasing.

(“Market size is irrelevant if it doesn’t translate into profit… in times of uncertainty, investors seek certainty. To quote Jerry Maguire, we have to ‘show them the money’… as CEO had said it to the staff at that time.)

Uber looks at the “liquidity” of autonomous vehicles

Behind the scenes of this transformation, continuous innovation has been taking place across Uber’s expansive technology stack (more on that below), and the company’s CEO highlighted the work of “technical teams that deliver in good, bad and uncertain markets” in an Aug. 6 quarterly earnings call.