Analysts Bet Big on Uber Stock's Expansion in Autonomous Driving

The race for artificial intelligence is one of the biggest gold mines in the global economy and the technology sector. The development of better models can spur growth in unrelated areas that most investors haven’t seen coming. One of these areas is autonomous driving, where a few companies are making breakthroughs that were seen as impossible a couple of years ago.

Despite this new technology already seeing decent volume and adoption, Wall Street is not really betting on the companies at the helm of this revolution, but rather the ones that will explicitly benefit from its introduction (the shovels instead of the gold, so to speak). This is why big valuation boosts just came in for Uber Technologies Inc. (NYSE: UBER), as a bet that the stock will keep reaching higher prices in the coming months.

The reasoning behind these decisions is clear, given the rapid growth of the autonomous driving space and the desire of the largest players to partner with Uber, leveraging its established platform to launch this new autonomous driving service across the United States. For this reason, investors shouldn’t ignore Uber stock today.

Uber’s Next Big Leap Forward

One bottleneck becomes clear as companies like Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) break through in autonomous driving technology through its Waymo service. Even though Waymo has Alphabet’s backing and support, rolling out its autonomous driving platform nationwide will take a bit more effort.

This is why Waymo has stated its interest in partnering with Uber in the future. The rideshare platform would offer its users the option of traditional or autonomous transport. This partnership opens up a new wave of potential upside in Uber, but this scenario is nowhere near being priced into today’s stock price.

Then there is Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), the next-of-kin in this autonomous taxi race. A pending announcement about the release date of a robotaxi feature for Tesla owners to enjoy is also in the works, as is a partnership with Uber.

Limiting the robotaxi concept to a decentralized Tesla platform would severely cap the growth potential the company could see in this untapped market, which is why aligning with Uber’s network and proven service makes all the sense in the world moving forward.

For this reason, investors don’t have to bet their portfolio’s future on whether Alphabet or Tesla wins this autonomous driving race, but on Uber's ability to bring these two players to the broader market.

Analysts Give the Green Light for Uber Stock

As of early July 2025, some Wall Street analysts were bold enough to risk their careers and reputations by making an early call on this autonomous driving expansion, and it’s not often investors get to see such calls being made to their advantage.

Justin Post from Bank of America thinks Uber is now worth up to $115 per share, as he reiterated his Buy rating on the company; however, another analyst was willing to top this call and come out with the highest target currently on the table for Uber stock.

Ken Gawrelski from Wells Fargo sees Uber stock as an Overweight name in the space, only this time he thinks it is worth up to $120 per share instead. From where it trades today, this valuation would call for a new 52-week high to be made and an additional 25% upside potential for investors to consider.

As momentum is one of the main factors institutional investors consider in their decisions, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Uber's potential to break a new 52-week high has attracted some new buyers. Allocators from Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management were one of the recent ones, upping their position by 5.8% as of early July 2025.

This new addition brought their entire stake to up to $24.9 million today, also showing investors how willing the “smart money” is to buy into the bullish Uber story here. Seeing all of these deals land on Uber’s future, there is also another capital flow that investors should take into consideration.

Over the past month alone, Uber’s short interest declined by as much as 31.3%, a collapse pointing to bearish capitulation as short sellers realize this optimism and momentum have no signs of slowing down, especially as the breakout of Waymo and Tesla’s robotaxi keeps pushing massive growth and anticipation.

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The article "Analysts Bet Big on Uber Stock's Expansion in Autonomous Driving" first appeared on MarketBeat.