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. Camp and Travis Kalanick had spent $800 hiring a private driver on New Year's Eve, which they deemed excessive, and Camp was also inspired by his difficulty in finding a taxi on a snowy night in Paris. 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.

In February 2010, Ryan Graves became the first Uber employee; he was named chief executive officer (CEO) in May 2010. In December 2010, Kalanick succeeded Graves as CEO and Graves became the chief operating officer.

Following a beta launch in May 2010, Uber's services and mobile app launched publicly in San Francisco in 2011. Originally, the application only allowed users to hail a black luxury car and the price was approximately 1.5 times that of a taxi. In 2011, the company changed its name from UberCab to Uber after complaints from San Francisco taxicab operators.

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. In April 2012, Uber launched a service in Chicago, whereby users were able to request a regular taxi or an Uber driver via its mobile app.

In July 2012, the company introduced UberX, a cheaper option that allowed drivers to use non-luxury vehicles, including their personal vehicles, subject to a background check, insurance, registration, and vehicle standards. By December 2013, the service was operating in 65 cities.

In December 2013, USA Today named Uber its tech company of the year.

In August 2014, Uber launched a shared transport service in the San Francisco Bay Area and launched Uber Eats, a food delivery service.


Uber logo used from February 2016 until September 2018
In August 2016, facing tough competition, Uber sold its operations in China to DiDi in exchange for an 18% stake in DiDi. DiDi agreed to invest $1 billion in Uber. Uber had started operations in China in 2014, under the name 优步 (Yōubù).

In 2016, Uber acquired Ottomotto, a self-driving truck company founded by Anthony Levandowski, for $625 million. Levandowski, previously employed by Waymo, allegedly founded Ottomotto using trade secrets he stole from Waymo. 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.

In December 2016, Uber acquired Geometric Intelligence. Geometric Intelligence's 15 person staff formed the initial core of "Uber AI", a division for researching AI technologies and machine learning. Uber AI created multiple open source projects, such as Pyro, Ludwig, and Plato. Uber AI also developed new AI techniques and algorithms, such as the POET algorithm and a sequence of papers on neuroevolution. Uber AI was shut down in May 2020.

In August 2017, Dara Khosrowshahi, the former CEO of Expedia Group, replaced Kalanick as CEO.

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. In March 2018, Uber merged its services in Southeast Asia with those of Grab in exchange for a 27.5% ownership stake in Grab.

Between May 2018 and November 2018, Uber offered Uber Rent powered by Getaround, a peer-to-peer carsharing service available to some users in San Francisco.

In November 2018, Uber became a gold member of the Linux Foundation.

On May 10, 2019, Uber became a public company via an initial public offering.

In the summer of 2019, Uber announced layoffs of 8% of its staff and eliminated the position of COO Barney Harford.

In October 2019, in partnership with HeliFlight, Uber offered 8-minute helicopter flights between Manhattan and John F. Kennedy International Airport for $200-$225 per passenger.

Between October 2019 and May 2020, Uber offered Uber Works, a mobile app connecting workers who wanted temporary jobs with businesses in Chicago and Miami.

In January 2020, Uber acquired Careem for $3.1 billion and sold its Indian Uber Eats operations to Zomato.

Also in January 2020, Uber tested a feature that enabled drivers at the Santa Barbara, Sacramento, and Palm Springs airports to set fares based on a multiple of Uber's rates.

In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Uber announced layoffs of over 14% of its workforce.

In June 2020, in its first software as a service partnership, Uber announced that it would manage the on-demand high-occupancy vehicle fleet for Marin Transit, a public bus agency in Marin County, California.

In July 2020, Uber, in partnership with its majority-owned Cornershop, launched Uber grocery delivery service in Latin America, Canada, Miami, and Dallas.

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.

In December 2020, Uber acquired Postmates for $2.65 billion.

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

In January 2021, Uber ATG/Advanced Technologies Group, a joint venture minority-owned by SoftBank Vision Fund, Toyota, and Denso that was developing self-driving cars, was sold to Aurora Innovation for $4 billion in equity and Uber invested $400 million into Aurora.

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.

In October 2021, Uber acquired Drizly, an alcohol delivery service, for $1.1 billion in cash and stock.

On January 20, 2022, Uber acquired Australian car-sharing company Car Next Door.

In May 2022, Uber began operations in Italy, forming a partnership with IT Taxi, Italy's largest taxi dispatcher, to integrate the dispatcher's drivers with the Uber platform. Uber had previously done similar deals in Spain, Germany, Austria, Turkey, South Korea, Hong Kong, and New York.

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. The company said that no sensitive data had been compromised

Instruction: Given a reference text about Uber, tell me when the old CEO was replaced.
Response: In August 2017, Dara Khosrowshahi replaced Travis Kalanick as the CEO of Uber.