Uber’s entire AI budget for 2026 was gone by April. The year isn’t even half over.
The ride-hailing giant has now imposed a $1,500 monthly spending cap per employee on agentic coding tools like Claude, after its Chief Technology Officer disclosed that four months of unchecked usage had consumed what was supposed to last twelve. Meta and Amazon are following suit with their own restrictions, part of a broader reckoning across Big Tech over just how expensive it is to let employees run wild with AI.
The ‘tokenmaxxing’ problem
That’s reportedly what happened at Meta, where employees engaged in a practice dubbed “tokenmaxxing,” essentially competitive overuse of AI tools, resulting in the consumption of tens of trillions of tokens.
Both Meta and Amazon had set up internal AI-usage leaderboards, originally designed to encourage productivity and adoption. The leaderboards have since been removed at both companies.
