Uber does not see a link between productivity gains and its colossal AI spending commitments, according to the company’s chief operating officer. Like much of the rest of the tech industry, Uber went all in on AI this past year. Company executives had employees across divisions embed AI into their workflows and reported that they were relying on AI agents for 10% of all code changes. While Uber doesn’t outwardly subscribe to this practice, many tech giants have reportedly begun incentivizing more AI use among their employees with internal token use leaderboards. In March, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argued that if you hire a software engineer for $500,000 a year, they should be consuming “at least $250,000 worth of tokens” in that same time frame. But tokens cost money, and it’s supposed to come from somewhere. Most executives have found that “somewhere” to be their own employees.
‘Somebody’s paying the bill’ for AI underperformance Last month, Uber CTO, Praveen Neppalli Naga, told The Information that Uber had already exceeded its 2026 AI budget within the first four months of the year. Shortly after, at the company’s earnings call earlier this month, executives said that Uber would be upping that AI spending even further and slowing down hiring to help pay for it.
