IN BRIEF: Uber is one of the Silicon Valley companies that has invested the most heavily in AI. However, its top executives are now sounding the alarm that the expected productivity and efficiency gains have not yet materialized.
Uber has increasingly positioned AI as a core part of its technology stack, and AI models now represent a significant portion of its corporate spending. Costs are rising, but the company has yet to see meaningful returns in terms of ROI. According to President and Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macdonald, the ride-sharing company may soon begin to question its extensive use of "vibe coding" and other AI-driven development tools.
Macdonald was recently interviewed on the Rapid Response podcast, where he said Uber's internal engineering teams are increasingly using Anthropic's Claude Code to generate software. However, the impact of this AI-assisted coding on overall productivity is difficult to measure.
He noted that Uber cannot clearly connect usage metrics for tools like Claude Code with the delivery of "useful" features to customers.
Macdonald's comments come just weeks after the company revealed the financial impact of its AI spending, with its entire 2026 AI budget reportedly exhausted in the first four months of the year.
