Uber lost $31b. They make about $4b/year in profit now. It'll take them 7 years to make it all back assuming they don't grow anymore.

$31b put into S&P 500 would have netted investors are more in return over the last 15 years. So honestly it was a bad deal.

And let's not forget that Uber can be killed by self driving cars.

That’s like claiming that Amazon is a bad investment because they weren’t reliably profitable until 2015 and only had their first profitable year in 2003. The part you’d be missing is that they were reinvesting all their profits into the revenue growth machine. These past few years is actually the switchover point for Uber when growth seems to have leveled off more.

It’ll take them 7 years to make it back and keep generating for even longer. Whether or not self driving cars kills Uber will depend on how well or poorly they’ve diversified their business model.

But headwinds and risks are true of any business. You’re missing the larger point I’m making that investors and business people frequently do loss leading as a tactic to kill off competitors and once the competitors are gone they can milk the market. Whether or not it’s an effective strategy doesn’t matter - can companies are not coming back no matter what happens to Uber. Similarly, local industries that China kills won’t come back no matter what happens with China.

Also as a final nit - the data I’ve looked up suggests they only lost 16B since founding. This halves the payback time to a few years and then every year after that is many billions in profit.