Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the real estate industry might hold the secret to making robotaxis work financially (www.businessinsider.com)

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi suggested at a recent All-In summit that the capital puzzle behind robotaxis—who will own, finance and maintain fleets when human drivers are phased out—could be solved by adapting a real estate model. Rather than Uber buying cars outright, Khosrowshahi envisions “financial owners” or investment vehicles, akin to REITs, owning large fleets and leasing them onto mobility networks. Those owners would handle capital expenses, maintenance and taxes while collecting rental-like fees, letting Uber remain asset-light as it shifts from human drivers to autonomous vehicles over the coming years. Technically and economically, that framing matters because vehicle ownership, depreciation, insurance, fleet maintenance, residual-value risk and regulatory compliance are major barriers to scaling robotaxi services. A REIT-style structure would pool capital, standardize long-term servicing and potentially securitize fleet cash flows, lowering per-vehicle financing costs and accelerating deployment. It also raises implications for labor (displaced drivers), market structure (new fleet-investor businesses), and regulation (licensing, safety and liability tied to institutional owners). Khosrowshahi’s proposal doesn’t solve the social and policy questions, but it outlines a plausible pathway to make robotaxis financially viable at scale.