The Value Of Nothing

Rethinking the Auto Industry.

- Angus MacKenzie

Think about this for a second: Uber is worth more than General Motors. That’s right, a company that makes nothing, owns nothing, and has yet to turn a profit is, according to the arcane math of the financial mavens who deal in such ephemera, worth close to $70 billion. GM, which last year manufactured and sold a record 9.8 million cars and trucks around the globe, earning $152 billion, has a market capitalization of about $48 billion.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Facebook, called the world’s most popular media company, creates no content and is valued at about $360 billion. So, too, is Amazon, a retailer that carries no inventory. Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no property and is worth $24 billion. The value of nothing? Quite a lot, it seems.

Of course, what makes all these companies worth so much is not hardware but software; they are digital platforms able to connect huge numbers of people and collect a lot of information about them. What makes Uber different, though, is that the commodity it trades—transport—is itself about to become a digital platform as automakers develop autonomous vehicles.