Uber raises its Careem stake in $100 million e& deal

Published: 2026-06-03T02:31:00.000Z

Uber is tightening its grip on Careem again, buying back a slice it once sold off. The company has agreed to purchase a 12.5 percent stake in Careem Technologies from Emirati telecom group e& for $100 million, leaving e& with 37.53 percent, down from 50.03 percent.

Uber is tightening its grip on Careem again, this time by buying back a slice of the business it once sold off. The American ride-hailing company has agreed to purchase a 12.5 percent stake in Careem Technologies from the Emirati telecom group e&, in a cash deal worth $100 million. The transaction, disclosed to the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange on monday, leaves e& with a 37.53 percent holding, down from the 50.03 percent it controlled before. It still needs regulatory clearance and the usual closing conditions before it wraps up. To make sense of the move, it helps to rewind a few years. Uber bought Careem outright for around $3.1 billion back in 2019, picking up a foothold across markets like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. The two businesses were later split, with the ride-share operation staying fully under Uber and the rest, the so called everything app covering food, grocery, payments and other lifestyle services, packaged into a separate unit called Careem Technologies. In late 2023, e& paid $400 million for a majority stake in that unit, so the latest deal effectively sees Uber clawing back some ownership of the super app side it had handed over. The reasoning on each side is fairly clear. e& framed the partial sale as part of a sharper focus on its core telecom business and a more disciplined approach to where it puts capital, while keeping a meaningful stake so it still benefits if Careem keeps growing. For Careem, the company pitched the change as a way to lean harder on Uber's global technology and platform muscle as it moves into its next phase. The growth case is not trivial either, since the unit says the gross value of transactions across its main services has risen close to fivefold over the past two years, helped by segments like Food, Quik, Plus and Pay. The deal also comes with a built in endgame. e& holds a put option that can force Uber to buy its remaining shares, and Uber holds a matching call option to require e& to sell, with both exercisable in a window stretching from december 2031 into january 2032. In plain terms, the path is set for Uber to eventually absorb the rest if either side chooses. For the wider region, this says a lot about how the Gulf's digital economy is consolidating. Super apps have become central to daily life across the Middle East and North Africa, bundling rides, deliveries and payments into one place, and control of that infrastructure is increasingly valuable. e& reported first quarter revenue up about 15 percent and a subscriber base nearing 248 million, so its pivot back toward core telecom signals that even the region's biggest players are picking their battles as global platforms deepen their hold on local consumer tech.