The Gulf's best known consumer technology brand is moving back toward its old owner. UAE telecoms group e& has agreed to sell 12.5 per cent of Careem Technologies to Uber for 100 million dollars in cash, a transaction that lifts Uber to majority ownership of the everything app and reduces e&'s holding from 50.03 per cent to 37.53 per cent, according to Wamda and a statement filed to the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange reported by The National. The sale remains subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
From spin out to reunion
The structure of the deal only makes sense against Careem's unusual corporate history. Uber agreed to buy Careem's ride hailing business in 2019 for 3.1 billion dollars, still the region's largest technology exit. The non ride hailing services, spanning food and grocery delivery, payments and lifestyle offerings, were later carved out into a separate company, Careem Technologies, and e& bought 50.03 per cent of that entity from Uber for 400 million dollars in a deal completed in December 2023. Less than three years later, a quarter of that position is heading back. Careem founder and chief executive Mudassir Sheikha said the move "brings Careem and Uber back into a closer, deeply familiar alignment" while e& remains a meaningful shareholder and strategic partner.
The options point to a full exit
The more telling detail sits in the fine print. As Gulf News reports, e& holds a put option that can require Uber to buy its remaining 37.53 per cent, and Uber holds a reciprocal call option that can require e& to sell, with both exercisable between 1 December 2031 and 31 January 2032. That window effectively pencils in a path for Uber to own the whole platform by 2032. For e&, the partial sale fits a stated focus on core businesses and disciplined capital allocation after a quarter in which group revenue rose about 15 per cent year on year to 19.4 billion dirhams.
Why a super app stake matters in the AI era
For Uber, the purchase consolidates a platform that touches daily life across the region. Careem Technologies operates in more than 70 cities across 10 countries, and its app bundles mobility, food, groceries and payments into a single account, as Mobile World Live notes. That breadth is precisely what makes the asset valuable now. A platform that sees how millions of Gulf consumers move, eat, shop and pay holds the kind of behavioural data on which useful consumer AI assistants get built, and Uber has been explicit about embedding AI deeper across its products. The Gulf's everything app experiment, launched under telecoms ownership, will now be tested as part of a global technology platform with far larger AI ambitions.
