I don't think this is right. They have to raise prices in some markets (e.g. California) to meet new regulations, sure, but some cities were already profitable

I don't think this is right. They have to raise prices in some markets (e.g. California) to meet new regulations, sure, but some cities were already profitable pre-pandemic without money burning shenanigans. The single largest thing that threw a wrench in the profitability projections was the pandemic, which caused two huge impacts in the supply/demand graph (the first one down when everyone stopped going out, and the second up now that things are going back to normal-ish, out-of-whack economy notwithstanding.) Uber, being a two-sided economy company, is extremely sensitive to abrupt changes in supply/demand. There's this persistent notion here that Uber used VC money to lower prices across the board, which is ostensibly true to some extent, but the reality is a bit more nuanced in the sense that Uber operates in a hyper-local fashion, with budgeting strategies catered individually to each city, each with the end goal of eventually stopping the `money => growth` strategy and switching to a self-sustainable model (or if that can't be achieved, then GTFO of there grabbing equity on the way out, as it already has in multiple markets).