Gary Black backs Uber as the best-positioned path to mass robotaxis, says Tesla and Waymo face bigger hurdles

Ride-hailing platform Uber is getting a bullish vote for the robotaxi race from investor Gary Black, who said the company has the best shot at bringing autonomous vehicles to the masses, ahead of rivals that include Tesla and Waymo.

Black, who is associated with The Future Fund LLC, made the case in commentary published by Yahoo Finance, framing robotaxis not just as an engineering challenge but as a go-to-market challenge: who can operationalize autonomy in a way that scales to everyday riders and routes.

In his view, Uber’s core business provides a distribution advantage. Instead of waiting for riders to adopt a new kind of service, the company already connects large numbers of customers with drivers through an app-led marketplace, which Black suggested could translate into faster consumer adoption once autonomy is ready.

He also implied that the market will reward operators that can integrate autonomous service into existing customer habits, including billing, pickup and drop-off experiences, and consistent availability, rather than relying purely on the technology behind self-driving systems.

The push toward robotaxis has accelerated across the auto and technology sectors, with competing approaches that range from building autonomous driving stacks in-house to operating fleets designed specifically for commercial mobility. Black’s argument places Uber in the “execution and scale” category of that debate.

While Black’s commentary was pointed about the competitive landscape, the published post did not provide detailed technical disclosures about what Uber, Tesla, or Waymo would need to do next, or specific timelines for deployment. It also did not outline measurable milestones, such as passenger-usage targets, unit-economics benchmarks, or regulatory progress required for mass service.

As investors track the robotaxi race, the key unknown remains which company can translate autonomy into a reliable, cost-effective service at scale, under real-world operating conditions. The market often treats headlines about self-driving progress and pilot expansion differently from the operational proof needed for widespread availability.

For Uber, what to watch is whether future disclosures or company updates move beyond the concept and clarify how autonomy would be introduced into its platform and what performance standards it expects. For Tesla and Waymo, the watch item is whether they can overcome any gap Black is pointing to, particularly around commercialization and scale.