For just a minute, can we put aside relentless fundraising from artificial intelligence startups? Let’s give some airtime to the gig economy firms of an older generation of startups that are now minting the kind of money these newer firms can only dream about.͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Aug 6, 2025
The Briefing
By Martin Peers
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Greetings!
For just a minute, can we put aside relentless fundraising from artificial intelligence startups? Let’s give some airtime to the gig economy firms of an older generation of startups that are now minting the kind of money these newer firms can only dream about. Yes, we’re talking about the second-quarter numbers out Wednesday from Uber, DoorDash, Lyft and Airbnb, which between them generated $4.2 billion in free cash flow in the quarter—while each grew in double-digit percentage terms.
Of this group, Uber is the standout, posting 18% higher revenue of $12.7 billion and 44% higher free cash flow of $2.475 billion. Both its food-delivery and ride-hailing businesses grew at a decent clip—20% and 16%, respectively, in gross bookings, the total dollar value of ride and delivery orders going through the service. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi deserves a lot of credit for making Uber a very profitable and growing company. And his strategy for the industry’s transition to robotaxis, now just beginning, sounds smart. As he said on The Information’s TITV video show today, Uber does better the more drivers are on its platform, “so just like we are looking to add more human drivers…we want to add more robot drivers.” (Read the transcript here.)
Uber is outpacing its smaller rival, Lyft, which posted 12% higher gross bookings in the quarter. But Lyft is more profitable by one measure: Its free cash flow of $329 million was 7% of gross bookings, whereas the same metric for Uber was 5.2%. Of course, Uber is operating internationally in food delivery, ride hailing and freight, so that margin difference is perhaps understandable.
In contrast, Uber is the underdog in food delivery, where its rival, DoorDash, is slightly bigger and growing a bit faster. DoorDash posted 23% higher gross order value of $24.2 billion in the quarter, compared with Uber’s 20% growth in gross bookings for delivery, totaling $21.7 billion. (The two differ slightly in their definitions, as Uber doesn’t include tips in gross bookings, unlike DoorDash.) But on the free cash flow front, Uber was ahead of DoorDash. (For details on Airbnb’s numbers, see here).
DoorDash is now expanding in Europe, where it will face off against a more deeply entrenched Uber, while Lyft has also taken baby steps to establish a presence in Europe through the purchase of European taxi app Freenow. That, along with the robotaxi revolution that investors fret could cannibalize Uber’s business, should keep Khosrowshahi busy for the next few years.
Disney’s Distraction
Disney CEO Bob Iger is, apart from being a good manager, great at PR. His June-quarter earnings report on Wednesday was a master class in how to divert attention from a dismal earnings report onto, as he put it, “updates related to our strategic priorities.” So we got a barrage of announcements about things we vaguely knew were coming, such as the exact launch date for the streaming version of the full ESPN channel (Aug. 21), and the plans to combine Hulu and Disney+ into one app—and rebrand Disney’s international general entertainment streaming service with the Hulu name.
But the more important news, arguably, was that Disney’s entertainment businesses performed poorly in the quarter. The old-fashioned TV channel business—the one excluding ESPN—suffered a 15% drop in revenue and a 28% drop in operating income. Sports—primarily ESPN—didn’t fare much better. Revenue rose 1% while profits fell. And Disney’s streaming performance was nothing to write home about, either. Its Disney+ flagship service reported flat subscriber numbers for North America compared with March. Internationally, Disney+ added 1.7 million subscribers, which is meager.
Including Hulu and Disney’s older ESPN+ U.S. streaming service (which has limited sports compared with the broader version about to launch), the company had 156.2 million global streaming subscribers at June 28, up just 1.6 million from March. In other words, Disney’s streaming apps appear to be stalling out at less than half the subscribers Netflix reported at the end of last year, the last time it disclosed its subscriber count. Notably, Disney said in a securities filing on Wednesday that it would stop reporting streaming subscribers after this fiscal year ends next month, a sure sign it wants to keep any such sorry news under wraps in the future.
Iger expects the addition of the new ESPN app—also available in a bundle with Hulu and Disney+—to drive subscriber growth. That’s a good bet, although many sports fans are surely already subscribers to Disney+, Hulu or ESPN+. For that reason, the app may not dramatically change Disney’s subscriber trajectory, not that we’ll know the details. To be sure, Disney seems destined to prosper as one of the big three in streaming, along with Amazon and Netflix. But Disney is likely to remain in third place.
In Other News
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will impose tariffs of about 100% on chips imported into the country, although the charge will not apply to companies who are “building” in the United States. Meanwhile Apple on Wednesday announced it will invest an additional $100 billion into U.S. manufacturing over the next four years.
Apollo Global Management is acquiring a majority stake in Stream Data Centers, as the asset manager looks to capitalize on a boom in data centers and AI.
Shopify stock jumped 19% after the ecommerce software firm reported 31% revenue growth and said it wasn’t seeing any impact on shopper behavior from President Trump’s tariffs so far.
Elon Musk’s X is using parent company xAI’s Grok artificial intelligence tools to handle more of the social media site’s advertising business, Musk and other xAI executives said Wednesday.
Mobile ad tech firm AppLovin continued to report gangbusters growth in the second quarter, posting 77% higher revenue of $1.26 billion, above the upper end of the company’s guidance.
OpenAI is in talks to sell shares held by current and former employees at a price that values the ChatGPT maker at $500 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter. Thrive Capital is in talks to lead the share sale.
Today on The Information's TITV
Check out today's episode of TITV in which we interview Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi about the company's latest quarter and plans for the future.
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