What happened
Uber President and COO Andrew Macdonald stated the company struggles to justify its AI investments, particularly the rising token consumption for tools like Claude Code, against tangible improvements in consumer features. This follows Uber reportedly exhausting its 2026 AI budget within four months and spending $3.4 billion on research and development in 2025, a 9% increase from the previous year. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi previously indicated that increased AI spending would offset slower headcount growth.
Why it matters
This development challenges procurement teams and CTOs to demonstrate clear return on investment for large-scale AI deployments. The mechanism involves a disconnect between escalating token costs and measurable user-facing product enhancements, impacting the metric of cost-effectiveness. This limits the justification for continued high AI expenditure without clear, attributable benefits.
