The winners are staring us in the face.

What if a ride were always available within 60 seconds of when you need it?

What if that ride was clean, warm, played your music, and cost just $1 per mile?

In 2026, we’re moving closer to that reality with autonomous vehicles. Waymo is operating in 6 cities and is quickly increasing its fleet, Zoox has launched fully autonomous vehicles in Las Vegas, Tesla’s robotaxis are now operating without a driver (there is a chase vehicle), and companies like WeRide, VW (via Mobileye), Baidu, and more are planning to remove safety drivers this year.

I continue to believe this is one of the biggest opportunities for investors today, but maybe not for the reasons you think.

There are strange nuances from autonomy, like how companies recognize revenue and how they utilize vehicles, that will change the opportunity, depending on the company. But at the core, the tailwinds are simple:

Let me explain why these will drive Uber $UBER ( ▼ 0.3% ) and Lyft $LYFT ( ▼ 1.65% ) higher over the next decade.

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On the demand side, the trends for ride-sharing are clear. If the availability of rides goes up and/or costs come down, demand goes up. And demand should explode as autonomous vehicles become a bigger portion of supply.

We saw this when Uber went from only providing black cars to offering SUVs and then high-end vehicles, and ultimately the UberX rides we know today. It’s counterintuitive, but ride-sharing growth is driven more by changes in supply than demand.

It’s a “build it, and they will come” business.

On the demand side, Uber thinks demand will increase exponentially if costs come down. Today, an Uber is around $2.50 per mile, on average, and while that’s compelling if you’re going out for the night or if your car is broken down, it’s not replacing vehicle ownership at scale, which the government estimates is $0.70 per mile.

What’s the growth opportunity if the percentage of urban vehicle miles traveled increases?

In the U.S. alone, people drive 3.2 trillion miles per year. Assuming the average Uber trip is 5 miles, Uber accounted for 64.4 billion miles driven globally.

In other words, Uber’s global miles driven were only 2% of total U.S. miles driven. Since about half of Uber’s revenue comes from the U.S. and Canada, Uber has about 1% of miles driven in the U.S.

In other words, Uber’s total addressable market is about 100x what we see today.

Obviously, the company won’t get to a 100% market share, but is a 10x in miles driven on the Uber platform possible over the next decade?

I think it is. And the same thesis works for Lyft.

There are two potentially more important tailwinds for Uber and Lyft’s operations.

The first is revenue recognition.

If you spend $10 on a ride, Uber and Lyft don’t record $10 in revenue. They record $10 in “bookings” and then share ~$7.30 with the driver, recording the remaining $2.70 as revenue.

Depending on how companies account for vehicles and how ownership of vehicles works, it’s possible revenue will be recognized as the booking number in the future. If Uber or Lyft owns the fleet, this would certainly be the case. So, there may be revenue tailwinds just from recognizing a higher percentage of bookings as revenue (assuming a constant take rate).

The second is margins.

There are high costs Uber and Lyft incur to recruit drivers, incentivize drivers, and provide insurance. And all of those costs end up on the income statement.

The table below is from Uber’s Q3 2025 10-Q filing. It includes platform direct costs.

And “other” costs.

You can see these costs are nearly ¾ of revenue in the mobility segment.

In an autonomous world, bonuses to drivers go away, and insurance costs should be reduced dramatically, whether those costs are borne by the ride-sharing platform or the fleet operator.

For example, this week, Lemonade said it would insure Tesla vehicle FSD miles at 50% of the previous cost (this is a 50% reduction in per-mile costs).

These savings should be passed on to Uber either by lowering Uber’s insurance costs or, if the autonomous vehicle fleet owner is the insurer, through lower rates by the vehicle owner.

Remember, Uber is a marketplace for transportation miles. And if the costs come down, that helps Uber’s margins and/or its addressable market.

One of the cases against autonomy is the volatility of ridesharing demand. Uber showed this chart a year ago in a presentation about its autonomy strategy.

You can see the problem. From the low to the high, there’s a 19x increase in demand. Will 90% of vehicles be idle for nearly half the day?

Many see this as a problem.

What if it’s an opportunity?

At the low point of demand, no human driver would want to work to reach very few riders. But autonomous vehicles aren’t human drivers. They’re available 24/7, like it or not. And marginal costs at those hours would be extremely low, potentially under $1 per mile.

So, what business models could emerge from this underutilized time?

New business models will emerge.

A supply of autonomous vehicles and low costs will bring new sources of demand.

Low nighttime utilization isn’t a problem for autonomous vehicles.

It’s an opportunity for innovation.

With all of the manufacturers and technology companies testing and launching autonomous vehicles, can we admit at this point that autonomous driving won’t be a winner-take-all market?

The companies that win will be the marketplaces for transportation miles.

Uber is the leader in that business, and Lyft is #2 in the U.S.

They both have an opportunity to 10x rider miles over the next decade, expand margins, and enable new business models that drive demand.

And I think they’re both great values today. Uber has a price-to-sales multiple of just 3.5 and a forward P/E ratio of 24.6x. That’s for a company growing in the high-teens.

Lyft is even cheaper at 1.0x sales and 13x forward earnings.

I highlighted above why I think there will be revenue growth and margin expansion at ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft.

Given their current valuations, I think they have an opportunity for multiple expansion as well.

That’s a trifecta for asymmetric investors.