They are two separate statements. Maybe some portions of Uber did grow exponentially. Riders, revenue, miles travelled, etc...
He also wants you to know that as part of that exponential growth, top line nearly tripled.
Cannot be miles. Can't be riders. Can't be drivers. Revenue is top line, by definition.
This statement is as bad as the original. There is no need for hyperbolic statements that one doesn't even understand. "Uber has grown significantly" works. Why the need to sound so sophisticated and use terms like "orders of magnitude" ? It erodes trust by signaling "we are full of sh*t".
If they didn't say "revenue tripled" and you asked people to speculate how much Uber had grown in 5 years given the statement, you'd get a lot of guesses around 100x.
Uber has grown 2 orders of magnitude!
All this concern, when he merely assumed everyone would realize he meant oom base 2. :P
Two orders of magnitude is 31.6 to 316 (10^1.5 to 10^2.5), so 32x would be sufficient.
Most Uber 5-year growth numbers seem less than 3x. Steelmanning, some programs seem new in 2021 (Uber One, autonomous driving), and thus might have grown more dramatically as they spun up.
But yes, eep. Maybe misuse will, by getting more exposure for the term, eventually get us more people who know and use it properly? Maybe?