The mood around corporate AI spending is turning, and Uber is saying so out loud. The company’s chief technology officer, Praveen Neppalli Naga, says the era of tokenmaxxing is coming to an end.
The term needs a translation. Tokenmaxxing is the practice of spending ever more on AI, measured in the tokens that models consume, on the assumption that more usage automatically means more value.
Uber knows the habit from the inside. The company burned through its entire Claude Code budget for 2026 by April, an eye-catching sign of how quickly AI bills can balloon once teams are set loose.
That experience has bred caution and Uber’s leadership has started questioning whether all that spending is actually producing the productivity gains and new products it was supposed to unlock.
The company’s president put it starkly earlier this year. Andrew Macdonald said the link between higher AI spending and shipping successful features simply is not there yet, even as usage statistics soared.
