Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Pours Billions Into Uber Amid Autonomous Vehicle Debate

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman's fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, has parked $1.9 billion—representing 14% of its portfolio—in ride-hailing leader Uber Technologies. Although Uber shares are down 29% from their peak due to market fears that self-driving cars will disrupt its business model, Ackman argues this perspective is fundamentally mistaken, positioning the company to be a major beneficiary of autonomous transport.

According to Pershing Square's data, Uber is uniquely positioned because it already owns the necessary infrastructure and network matching riders with fleet deployment. Autonomous vehicle developers are choosing to launch on Uber's platform rather than building independent networks from scratch, gaining instant access to 215 million monthly active users. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi noted that autonomous partners achieve 30% more trips per vehicle per day on Uber's network compared to their own first-party systems.

Looking at the financial mechanics, human drivers represented Uber's largest single cost, taking $25 billion of the $59.8 billion in gross bookings generated during the third quarter of 2026. Transitioning portions of this fleet to autonomous vehicles could dramatically lower operating expenses and boost profitability without requiring new customers. Uber plans to expand its autonomous footprint from roughly 700 vehicles across five partners by the end of 2026 to more than 2,000 vehicles from at least 10 partners across 20 global cities by the end of 2027.

Valuation-wise, Uber trades at a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 2.6 based on a market capitalization of $145.3 billion and trailing 12-month revenue of $56.5 billion as of November 9. This sits well below its historic average P/S ratio of 4 and the Nasdaq-100 index average of 6.1. Furthermore, Uber's P/E ratio sits at 42.2, considerably cheaper than rival DoorDash at 75.1, highlighting what Ackman views as an overly pessimistic market discount driven by disruption fears.

What to watch next: Monitor the expansion of Uber's autonomous vehicle partnerships and vehicle deployment milestones heading into 2027.