Uber's CEO has this advice for investors trying to find the real AI winners

By William Gavin Avoid companies simply 'play-acting' with AI, according to Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been an advocate for his company's adoption of autonomous vehicles. Uber Technologies CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has a warning for investors looking to invest in companies adopting artificial intelligence: Avoid those that are using AI to put a "veneer" on existing services. "I think where investors can do very well is...finding companies that are truly looking to transform themselves using AI versus companies that are saying the right words and kind of play-acting their way into a pretend transformation," he said at a Tuesday event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "The companies that truly lean into AI and change the way that they work are going to be the winners," he added. Investors need to be able to distinguish "the play-acting from the real stuff." While the typical Uber (UBER) rider might not think of the company as an AI play, investors and analysts have been coming around to the company's vision of replacing human drivers with vehicles driven by computers, or robotaxis. Over the past several years, Uber has teamed up with at least 21 companies to work on augmenting its business with autonomous cars, trucks and delivery robots. Those include Nvidia (NVDA) and Alphabet (GOOG)( GOOGL)-backed Waymo in the U.S., as well as firms like China's Baidu and Pony.ai in international markets. Read: Uber's stock is almost historically cheap. Are robotaxis an existential threat? Although Khosrowshahi thinks investment in the autonomous-vehicle market - which, in the U.S., is led by Waymo, Uber and Tesla (TSLA) - is not "overheated by any means," he has a different perspective on the rest of the AI industry. "Consumers or investors are paying for very, very aggressive assumptions of forward growth," he said. "The potential for AI to transform how businesses are run, the potential for AI to make every human into a superhuman...it is absolutely game-changing." Corporate executives are increasingly eager to tout their plans for AI, from automating workflows to chatbots. Ninety-five percent of CEOs who responded to a December Stagwell survey said they viewed the technology as transformative, while 78% said they were bullish on how AI would impact workplace efficacy. But Khosrowshahi drew a line between companies doing "pretty easy" tasks like providing AI summaries of client pitches in a slight boost to productivity, and those developing company-specific software from the ground up. He used Uber as an example, explaining that the company had only mild success after it tried to fit AI into its prior framework for customer service. Uber's service became much better after starting from scratch and using an AI agent to develop new policies, according to Khosrowshahi. "To some extent, you've got to break down those rules and start over with AI to get the full potential of AI inside of your company," Khosrowshahi said. -William Gavin This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. (END) Dow Jones Newswires 01-20-26 1651ET