Uber crushes earnings, Google loses in court, and will the last person at OpenAI turn off the lights?
Welcome to Cautious Optimism, a newsletter on tech, business, and power. Modestly upbeat.
📈 Trending Up: Starlink competition … crypto to AI pivots … Uber’s shares … Lucid’s Saudi backing … open-source monetization …
📉 Trending Down: Twitter’s SF rent … CNET’s worth … Axios’s staffing levels …
🤓 Alex Update: I’m technically off this week, so CO will be slightly abbreviated. Thankfully, the global markets are recovering and the panic of yesterday has subsided.
Uber’s winsome quarter
Uber crushed Q2 2024 earnings expectations, beating EPS estimates ($0.47 versus $0.31) and revenue estimates ($10.7 billion versus $10.6 billion). Shares of the company are up 8.6% in pre-market trading this morning after the results dropped.
Here are the key numbers:
A few quick thoughts: Uber is in operating leverage heaven right now. With profitability advancing greatly in excess of revenue growth, the company is kicking off cash and net income like it’s going out of style. Also, $40 billion worth of gross bookings is just damned impressive.
Uber’s overall earnings package remains its usual labyrinthine mess, but the company’s model is performing well in the current moment, and I think that CEO Dara Khosrowshahi deserves more credit from the business stans than he currently recevies.
Google’s monopoly mess
The biggest story in tech this morning is that Google lost a case and was declared a monopoly in search by Judge Amit Mehta. You can read the ruling here, but I have excerpted its own summary in case you are in a hurry:
The ruling is massive — I have yet to get through even most of it, because I have a toddler — so I expect we’ll circle back to it. But the above will do for the moment.
Do not expect the world to change. For now, at least. Google intends to appeal. That will take years. The ruling is a setback for the search giant and its business practices all the same.
For fun, let’s poll the team:
Will the last person at OpenAI turn off the lights?
Closing, as I am being hauled off to a children’s science museum, OpenAI is getting sued (again?) by Elon Musk, and is shedding talent like a shaking dog gets rid of water. Even more, OpenAI announced it was getting into search the other week and the market reaction was limited.
What’s going on over there? Is the mojo gone?