[2] In 2009, Garrett Camp, a co-founder of StumbleUpon, came up with the idea to create Uber to make it easier and cheaper to procure direct transportation.

[3][4] The prototype of the mobile app was built by Camp and his friends, Oscar Salazar and Conrad Whelan, with Kalanick as the "mega advisor" to the company.

[6][7] Originally, the application only allowed users to hail a black luxury car and the price was approximately 1.5 times that of a taxi.

The company's early hires included a nuclear physicist, a computational neuroscientist, and a machinery expert who worked on predicting arrival times for Uber's cars more accurately than Google APIs.

[15][16][17] In July 2012, Uber had introduced UberX, a cheaper option that allowed drivers to use non-luxury vehicles, but still subject to having a California Public Utilities commercial license.

Uber settled a lawsuit regarding the use of such intellectual property and reached a deal to use Waymo's technology for its freight transport operations.

[34][35] Earlier in March 2015, as CEO of Expedia Group, Khosrowshahi had led a multimillion equity investment in Wingz, Inc., the first ridesharing company in the world.

[36][37] In February 2018, Uber combined its operations in Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan with those of Yandex Taxi and invested $225 million in the venture.

[59] In September 2020, Uber committed to carbon neutrality globally by 2040, and required that, by 2030, in most countries, rides must be offered exclusively in electric vehicles.

[63][64][65] Also in December 2020, Uber sold its Elevate division, which was developing short flights using VTOL aircraft, to Joby Aviation.

[68][69] In March 2021, the company moved to a new headquarters on Third Street in Mission Bay, San Francisco, consisting of several 6- and 11-story buildings connected by bridges and walkways.

[70] In October 2021, Uber acquired Drizly, an alcohol delivery service, for $1.1 billion in cash and stock; it was shut down in early 2024.

On September 15, 2022, Uber discovered a security breach of its internal network by a hacker that utilized social engineering to obtain an employee's credentials and gain access to the company's VPN and intranet.

[82] In 2014, with regards to airport pickups without a permit in California, drivers were actually told to ignore local regulations and that the company would pay for any citations.

[83] Uber's response to California Assembly Bill 5 (2019), whereby it announced that it would not comply with the law, then engaged lobbyists and mounted an expensive public opinion campaign to overturn it via a ballot, was cited as an example of this policy.

[88] In March 2017, an investigation by The New York Times revealed that Uber developed a software tool called "Greyball" to avoid giving rides to known law enforcement officers in areas where its service was illegal such as in Portland, Oregon, Australia, South Korea, and China.

[100][101][102] A January 2018 report by Bloomberg News stated that Uber routinely used a "panic button" system, codenamed "Ripley", that locked, powered off and changed passwords on staff computers when those offices were subjected to government raids.

[117] In 2016, Uber hired the global security consulting firm Ergo to secretly investigate plaintiffs involved in a class action lawsuit.

Hackers used employees' usernames and passwords that had been compromised in previous breaches (a "credential stuffing" method) to gain access to a private GitHub repository used by Uber's developers.

[144][145] In September 2018, in the largest multi-state settlement of a data breach, Uber paid $148 million to the Federal Trade Commission, and admitted that internal access to consumers' personal information was closely monitored on an ongoing basis was false, and stated that it had failed to live up to its promise to provide reasonable security for consumer data.

The criminal complaint said Joe Sullivan arranged with Travis Kalanick's knowledge, to pay a ransom for the 2016 breach as a "bug bounty" to conceal its true nature, and for the hackers to falsify non-disclosure agreements to say they had not obtained any data.

[153] In March 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported a trend of popular service apps like Uber emphasizing higher margin advertising to increase profits.

The reporting mentioned Uber personalizing content based on user data and maintain the balance between increasing ad revenue and annoying and turning away customers.

[154] In February 2024, a multidistrict litigation (MDL) was established in the Northern District of California against Uber Technologies, Inc., consolidating numerous claims from among the more than 3,000 sexual assault lawsuits filed against the company in state and federal courts.

[155] These lawsuits allege Uber prioritized growth over safety by using inadequate background checks, skipping in-person driver vetting, and failing to invest in preventive measures such as cameras or monitoring systems.

Some survivors have chosen to pursue justice in state courts outside of the MDL, seeking faster resolutions and a more individualized approach.

[157] Uber has posted hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in losses each year from 2014 until 2022 except for 2018, when it exited from the markets in Russia, China, and Southeast Asia in exchange for stakes in rival businesses.