According to the New York Times, Dara Khosrowshahi is Uber’s new CEO, filling the spot that was vacated by Travis Kalanick back in June.
Khosrowshahi hails from Expedia where he held the position of CEO since 2005. The board had narrowed their decision down to Khosrowshahi and Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, however, recently there were strong rumors of GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt also being a contender for the position.
The decision to hire Khosrowshahi as the new CEO ends nearly two months of constant speculation, as well as reported meddling by Kalanick, who is still an Uber board member.
Before Expedia, Khosrowshahi was with IAC, the conglomerate of brands which includes everything from Ask.com to Tinder. Expedia was initially part of IAC’s travel vertical, but eventually left in 2005, with Khosrowshahi as its leader. Since then Khosrowshahi has overseen Expedia as it rose from $15 billion in bookings to $72 billion in 2016.
As Expedia deals with car rental and other transportation companies on behalf of travelers, Khosrowshahi is quite familiar with the transportation industry.
According to Recode, Uber has not yet officially announced Khosrowshahi’s newly appointed position, as he has not formally accepted the job (though he’s expected to), and because of this, it is not clear when he is due to start either.
Kalanick was the public face of Uber since its beginning, and he maintained the CEO position through a number of bumps in the road and some sizable scandals, until he was asked by the board of directors to “take some time of.”
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