Uber continues to lose top talents, millions of dollars

Uber’s finance chief, Gautam Gupta, is leaving the company as he is pursuing a new opportunity in a Bay Area startup. His departure comes as the company is having a tumultuous year and has been losing its top talents and money.

Uber recorded a loss of $708 million in the first quarter of this year, but the company said Gupta’s resignation is in no way related to the losses, Forbes reported. He will be a COO in a startup firm after serving as the vice president of finance in Uber for the past four years. Uber is still looking for Gupta’s replacement, someone with experience as a chief financial officer as the company is gearing up for its initial public offering.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the ride-hailing company was able to trim down its losses from $991 million the previous quarter. Its revenue also rose 18 percent to $3.4 billion. Despite the losses, investors are not worried given Uber’s potential for sales growth.

Uber is under aa siege of problems. (Source)

Per CNN, investors believe that “the reward is worth the risk.” Uber’s aggressive spending and heavy investment around the world today would eventually help the company beat its competitors on pricing.

Uber is facing several problems, including the legal battle with Alphabet’s Waymo over trade secrets concerning self-driving cars. This led to the company firing its self-driving car engineer, Anthony Levandowski. The U.S. government is also conducting a criminal investigation against Uber, which allegedly used a software tool that prevents detection of its drivers in areas it was not supposed to be operating.

President Jeff Jones resigned from his position earlier this year, Gary Marcus quit as the head of Uber’s artificial-intelligence labs, Raffi Krikorian stepped down as senior director of engineering at the company’s Advanced Technologies Center, and Ed Baker also abandoned his position as vice president of product and growth. Many people are expected to leave the company when the results of investigations on sexual harassment within the company come out, per Vanity Fair.