Uber picks up a new CEO, Expedia’s Dara Khosrowshahi, ending high-profile search

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For days, rumors swirled around several high-profile execs in the running for the Uber CEO job. In the end, the ridesharing company went with the lesser-known Dara Khosrowshahi of Expedia,

Uber’s board has finally chosen a new leader, and it’s not any of the high-profile executives that rumors had been swirling around. Rather, it’s the much-less-well-known Dara Khosrowshahi, who is the current leader of Expedia. On Monday, the travel company confirmed that its CEO had been offered the leading position at the ridesharing giant, where he’ll have his work more than cut out for him.

Over the course of the last few days, rumors had run rampant about who the final pick for the challenging position might be. It was initially suggested that former GE leader Jeff Immelt would be taking the reins from Travis Kalanick, but Immelt himself confirmed that he would not be pursuing the position in a tweet on Sunday. Then it seemed as though Meg Whitman of Hewlett Packard Enterprise was the top contender. But now, all this speculation has passed, and Khosrowshahi has emerged as the last person standing.

The Expedia exec, in many ways, seems to be the opposite of the scandal-prone Kalanick. Khosrowshahi hails from Iran, where his family owned a number of manufacturing plants. As such, it came as little surprise that he was one of the first tech leaders to voice opinions against the Trump administration, especially as they related to its travel ban.

Khosrowshahi also boasts considerable experience, having served as president and chief executive of Expedia since 2005. While the public company is smaller than the private Uber, it provides a similar service — helping people travel from Point A to Point B (though the distance may vary quite a bit between the two firms). Expedia is based in Bellevue, Washington, where the tech culture is markedly different from that of Silicon Valley.

Still, relatively little is known about the executive, as his name seemed to be one of the few not mentioned in the ongoing deliberations surrounding Uber’s leadership future. And Khosrowshahi may need to fend off attempts by Kalanick himself to regain control of Uber, as the former CEO has long been rumored to be looking for a way back in.