Uber has been on an acquisition spree.
Last month, it agreed to buy ezCater, the catering platform that feeds office meetings, for $2.3B. That’s the latest in a run of nine acquisitions this year, up from five in 2025 and none in the two years before that.
So we looked at Uber’s acquisition strategy and who it should add to its cart next.
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How Uber shops
Uber spent 2019 to 2022 buying delivery and ride companies like Careem, Postmates and Cornershop, then quieted down for two years.
This year, it’s agreed to nine acquisitions, and they fall into three groups:
- Delivery apps abroad (4): Delivery Hero ($14.8B, pending), Korea’s Woowa Brothers (pending), Getir’s delivery business in Turkey (pending), and a majority of Careem in the Middle East
- More things to book in the app (3): SpotHero for parking ($617M), ezCater for catering ($2.3B, pending), and Blacklane for chauffeurs (pending)
- Getting around cities (2): European scooter company Voi (pending) and Hong Kong taxi app FlyTaxi
Seven of the nine are based outside the US, and ezCater and Blacklane both bring in business customers with bigger orders. Instead of buying its way into new categories like it did with Cornershop (grocery) and Drizly (alcohol), Uber is now buying the companies it used to compete with.
Nearly all nine are marketplaces that connect customers with drivers, restaurants or parking spots. But notably, what Uber doesn’t buy is the technology that could eventually replace those drivers. Since selling its self-driving unit in 2020, its only tech acquisition has been Segments.ai, a small startup that labels data for self-driving cars.
Where Uber should buy
Uber’s newest deals, ezCater and Blacklane, show it wants more business customers. If it keeps going after them, there are two obvious gaps:
- Everyday meals for employees. ezCater handles catered meetings, but not the daily lunch budgets companies give their teams.
- The rest of the trip. Blacklane gets business travelers to the airport. The trains, buses and ferries after that are still booked somewhere else.
Uber also builds on existing ties. A third of this year’s deals, Delivery Hero, Getir and Careem, were companies it already had a stake in or part of. That points to two areas where Uber relies on outside partners today:
- A drone fleet of its own. Uber’s drone partner Flytrex also delivers for DoorDash, its biggest US rival. Owning it would keep those drones on Uber.
- Sidewalk robots. Robots already deliver Uber Eats orders in several US cities, but Uber doesn’t own any of them.
4 companies Uber should buy
- Sharebite, which runs meal benefits for companies. Employers use it to give workers a daily food budget they can spend at restaurants, filling the gap ezCater leaves.
- Distribusion, which connects travel apps to trains, buses and ferries. Through one connection, retailers like Google, Alipay and Booking.com can sell tickets from travel carriers.
- Flytrex, the drone delivery company. It was Uber’s first drone investment, but it also flies for DoorDash. The startup is scaling fast, targeting 60 delivery sites across the Dallas metro by mid-2027, on just $60M raised in total.
- Coco, a sidewalk delivery robot company. Its robots already deliver Uber Eats orders in Chicago, Miami and LA. The startup last raised about 16 months ago and is in its Funding Window, per CB Insights.
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