Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) and DoorDash, Inc. (NASDAQ:DASH) have returned -1% and 22% over the past six months, compared to a 21.25% return for the Insider Monkey Billionaire Index and 14% for State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, as of October 12.
Uber and DoorDash are both expanding beyond their original businesses. Uber is building on its ride-hailing and food-delivery platform, while DoorDash is trying to become a bigger part of consumers’ grocery and shopping habits. Both have room to grow, but investors are paying very different prices for that opportunity.
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Both Companies Have Room to Grow
Uber’s opportunity isn’t limited to getting more people to book rides. It can also encourage existing customers to use Uber Eats, and vice versa. Management says customers who use both services are growing 1.5x faster than those who use only one. That makes sense: the more reasons customers have to open the app, the more useful the platform becomes.
There is also room to reach consumers in less-dense US markets, where Uber says fewer than 10% of eligible consumers used its services in the past year, compared with more than 50% in dense markets. Expanding into these areas won’t necessarily be as easy or as profitable, but it shows that Uber’s growth doesn’t depend entirely on taking customers from competitors in markets it already serves.
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DoorDash is pursuing a similar strategy through grocery, retail, advertising, and services for merchants. The idea is to make the platform useful for more than ordering food. Grocery and retail orders can bring customers back more often, while advertising and merchant services give DoorDash additional ways to make money from its existing network.
Its latest results show that the business is growing quickly. In Q2 2026, orders increased 27% to 970 million, and revenue rose 36% to $4.5 billion. The Deliveroo acquisition contributed to that growth, but revenue still increased 24% excluding the deal. Uber also had a strong quarter, with gross bookings above $58 billion and trailing 12-month free cash flow topping $10 billion.
The addressable market for both companies is expanding as they move into more services and reach more customers. The difference is that Uber already generates substantial free cash flow, while DoorDash, Inc. still has to show that its newer categories can translate into durable profits. DoorDash expects its newer verticals to become gross-profit-positive in the second half of 2026, which will be an important milestone.
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Valuation: Uber Has the Easier Case to Make
At 15.92x forward earnings, Uber looks much cheaper than DoorDash at 38.02x. But the gap needs some context. Uber’s trailing P/E of 15.22x was affected by a roughly $1.6 billion pre-tax gain from the revaluation of equity investments in Q2. That makes trailing earnings less useful for judging its underlying performance, although the forward multiple still looks reasonable.
Uber Technologies, Inc. is also generating the cash to support its valuation. Gross bookings grew 22% in Q2, and non-GAAP earnings per share rose 35%. The company can invest in new markets and autonomous-vehicle partnerships without relying entirely on the promise of profits years from now. Autonomous vehicles could become a meaningful opportunity, although the technology’s contribution to Uber’s business remains small today.
DoorDash has a stronger growth story in some respects. Its expansion into grocery and retail, along with advertising and merchant services, gives it several ways to increase revenue from its customer and merchant base. But a forward P/E of 38.02x leaves less room for mistakes. The company needs to keep growing quickly while improving the economics of its newer businesses. If profitability takes longer than expected or competition pushes up customer-acquisition and retention costs, revenue growth alone may not be enough to support the stock.
Uber seems like the better choice at these prices. DoorDash has plenty of room to grow, especially as it moves into grocery and retail, but a lot has to go right to justify its valuation. Uber is growing too, generates more than $10 billion in free cash flow, and trades at less than half DoorDash’s forward P/E. That makes it the better deal.
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Market Sentiment
The number of funds holding UBER fell from 153 to 151, according to Insider Monkey’s database, while the value of their positions edged up from $9.30 billion to $9.33 billion. For DASH, the number of holders dropped from 117 to 107, even as the value of their positions increased from $6.01 billion to $6.37 billion. Fewer funds held each stock, but the overall value of reported positions increased.
While we acknowledge the risk and potential of UBER and DASH as investments, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than UBER and DASH and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
