three years ago, Lyft was floundering. Perpetual loser Uber was in danger of being completely off the road. The founders were in charge, and in March 2023, they hired former Microsoft and Amazon executive David Risher to turn things around. The new CEO expanded its service in other countries, made deals with Waymo and Nvidia, reduced trip cancellations and paid drivers more. Just this week, Lyft announced that New York customers would also see taxis among their options. The company now reports a profit, but it still ranks second in ride-sharing and its stock is down this year. I recently spoke with Risher about Lyft’s prospects, his critical view of Uber, and his plans to run fleets of self-driving cars owned by tech or civilian companies.

STEVEN LEVY: Where are you in your recovery mission?

DAVID RISER: When I came in, we were losing share: Lyft was 26 or 27 percent compared to the other one. We were losing money, $300 million a year. Things weren’t looking good. I went to the Jeff Bezos school, so when I came in, my whole focus was customer obsession. We spent quarter after quarter adjusting our cost position so we could lower prices. We increase driver rates, because if they are not paid enough, they tend to get very frustrated and don’t provide great service, and they leave the platform. We start to innovate again. So today we are profitable. We have some of the highest driver satisfaction rates we’ve ever had and our passengers are coming back. And our quota now amounts to about 31 points.

However, its shares have fallen.

Our analysts and investors love the fact that we are growing quarter over quarter, but they also see uncertainty in the industry.

31 percent is still a distant second. I saw a headline the other day: “Is OpenAI on its way to becoming Lyft?” The story wasn’t even about ridesharing! What does it take to never see that headline again?

That could be a false premise. We make one billion trips a year in North America. The other guys maybe do two. [Uber doesn’t break out numbers geographically but reports around 14 billion rides a year globally.] That’s 3 billion trips between the two of us. But people make 160 billion trips in their private cars each year. So there is a gigantic market in which you can grow.

The reason we have been gaining share over the last few years is because our service is simply better. On average, we’ll pick you up faster than those guys. We have reduced driver cancellations. The next phase is what we call “Save Money, Check Lyft,” which is based on a very basic premise that if you’re one passenger and you’re just checking each other out, you’re leaving money on the table. If people checked every time, we would have over 50 percent participation. I promise you.

Yesterday my son was on a stuck train and needed a ride to the station a few stops down. Uber was $70 and Lyft was $130.

We try to beat them more than we lose, but we have different algorithms, different data. We check religiously and obsessively to make sure that’s true.

I often hear from drivers (both Uber and Lyft) that companies take too big a cut. Is that complaint valid?

The short answer is no. Certainly, in the early days of this industry, there were massive and effective subsidies for drivers, and there are still drivers who remember that or have friends who remember those days. We will never, ever, ever take more than 30 percent after purchasing insurance.