Uber has trimmed its customer-service ranks and pointed at AI. The company cut 10% of jobs in its community operations team on Wednesday. It is part of a wider push to “simplify operations, strengthen in-person collaboration, and continue to embrace AI,” a spokesperson told Bloomberg by email.
It is a first for Uber. The company has cut staff before. But this is the first time it has tied layoffs directly to an AI efficiency drive, Bloomberg reported. It is also the second round of cuts in under two months.
“Our organisation has become too complex and siloed,” Megha Yethadka, Uber’s vice-president of global community operations, wrote in an internal memo. Bloomberg obtained it. The team “has made some strides” with AI, she said. “But to unlock this potential, we need an effective organisation to layer AI on. We cannot scale frontier technology on top of fragmented processes.”
A familiar refrain
Uber joins a growing list. In recent months, firms from payments company Block to Oracle have named AI as a reason for job cuts. Monday.com trimmed a fifth of its staff under an “AI growth” banner. Even big banks have made the same case.
