Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO, Uber. Photo credit: The Presidential Office of Ukraine, licensed under Creative Commons

Ride-hailing giant Uber is considering strategic options for its Uber Elevate aerial transportation project, options including a partial sale to an outsider, according to a report from Axios, wherein such a deal points to Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s focus on reaching profitability at a period when the company is bleeding cash from its operations. In fact, Uber is just fresh off the sale of its European freight operations to a rival German company, Sennder, and shortly after that secured $500 million in outside funding for its broader Freight division.

Uber Elevate is a division of the company that’s dedicated to developing a network of autonomous aerial taxis, something that comes off as a moonshot and with no major revenue-generating operations yet. Uber itself says it expects the division to commence formal operations in 2023, three years from now representing a quite long time. Even as the unit isn’t yet fully operational, Uber is presumably spending significant sums of money to keep it afloat and would make good from seeking external funding to prop it up.

Uber isn’t anyway new to clinching deals with external companies that involve selling partial stakes in some of its divisions, having already sold stakes in its Freight and self-driving technology divisions to outside investors. The company now seems to be considering doing the same for its Elevate unit. 

With grand plans to launch a network of on-demand flying taxis, Uber Elevate had started lean by first offering an on-demand helicopter service in New York City. That service was however suspended during the coronavirus pandemic.

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