Uber has always wanted to be more than a ride; now it has reason to hurry

TechCrunch Desktop Logo TechCrunch Mobile Logo LatestStartupsVentureAppleSecurityAIAppsDisrupt 2026 EventsPodcastsNewsletters SearchSubmit Site Search Toggle Mega Menu Toggle Topics Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture More from TechCrunch Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Contact Us Image Credits:Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch Transportation Uber has always wanted to be more than a ride; now it has reason to hurry Connie Loizos 11:08 AM PDT · May 10, 2026 For years, Uber talked about becoming a super app. Then Waymo started picking up passengers in San Francisco, and the conversation grew more urgent. The company has been trying to embed itself inside the AV industry — as a data provider, an investor, and a distribution platform — but the consumer-facing bet may be just as important.

Two weeks ago, Uber held its annual GO-GET product event in New York and announced something its executives had been circling for a long time: Users in the U.S. can now book hotels inside the Uber app, through a partnership with Expedia Group, with access to more than 700,000 properties worldwide. Uber One members — the company’s subscription tier at $9.99 a month — get 20% off a rotating list of 10,000 hotels and 10% back in credits. Vacation rentals through Vrbo will follow later this year, along with restaurant reservations via OpenTable.

In the meantime, a “Shop for Me” feature lets users order from stores that aren’t even on the platform. The announcements, taken together, were the most concrete picture yet of something Uber has been trying to conjure since at least 2019: that an app with 199 million monthly active users could become the app they use for nearly everything. Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber’s CTO, offered the clearest explanation of the company’s thinking at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event late last month in San Francisco.

The super-app concept has existed for years in India and Southeast Asia, he noted, but U.S. versions have mostly flopped by bolting services onto traffic rather than building toward a reason to stay. Every new category — food, groceries, now hotels — gives someone another reason to pay for Uber One. Uber tried flight booking in Europe years ago without success.

Financial services sound like a possibility too — Uber already offers a debit card to drivers in Mexico — though how far that goes, or when, remains unclear. Said Naga: “Never say never.” Uber isn’t alone in this race. Airbnb, arguably the company most directly threatened by Uber’s hotel push, announced its own transportation ambitions in late March — a partnership with Welcome Pickups to offer airport transfers in 125 cities across Asia, Europe, and Latin America, structured to keep users inside the Airbnb app rather than sending them to Uber.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has spent three years promising to turn X into an “everything app” in the WeChat mold and is now nearing what he describes as a long-stated goal: X Money, a banking and payments platform built inside the social network, is expected to launch publicly soon. X claims 500 million monthly active users. var playerInstance_jwplayer_6a7c837909c0f = jwplayer( "jwplayer_6a7c837909c0f" ); playerInstance_jwplayer_6a7c837909c0f.setup(); The big question is how many super apps the American market will actually support. WeChat works in China partly because the alternative was a patchwork of inferior options.