Agree. Investors buy stock from the company itself. This added billions to the balance sheet at Uber.

The chief argument against the long term viabilty of Uber is that they are burning that investor money ON THEIR DRIVERS at an unsustainable rate. Here is a good article on Ubers spend, hundreds of millions NOT on their drivers, but in 2019 it was 1.9B on their drivers. And of course we all hear about Uber is a loosing money business. That is because it is using that investor money to offset the shortfall on driver salaries.

Now maybe it IS pump and dump, but if so it is the investors that were pumped. Of course hundreds of millions still go to high paid engineers and manager too. No dispute on that score. but all that “lost” investor money from this pump and dump scheme definitely did help drivers and the consumer public and ultimately will hurt investors if/when it fails.