Uber caps employee AI spending after blowing through budget in four months

In Brief

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AI is getting expensive, and some companies are cutting back on usage in an attempt to moderate costs. That cohort includes Uber, which recently instituted internal usage caps as a way to cut down on its exorbitant AI spend.

Bloomberg reports that the company has instituted a new rule that places a monthly $1,500 cap per employee and per agentic coding tool, including Anthropic’s Claude Code or Cursor. The usage is trackable via an internal dashboard that each employee has access to, although — in certain cases — the caps can be exceeded with permission, the company says.

The news is perhaps not too surprising, since, in April, the company’s CTO revealed that the ridesharing giant had blown through its entire annual AI budget in a matter of four months. That appears to have occurred after Uber encouraged staff to use AI “as much as possible” and even ranked their internal usage competitively on internal leader boards, The Information previously reported.

Uber’s COO, Andrew Macdonald, also recently cast doubt on AI’s productivity impact, noting during a podcast appearance that “it’s very hard to draw a line” between AI usage and new consumer features.

Uber’s cutback raises a broader issue that the tech industry is currently facing: As enterprises pour money into AI, where exactly is the return on investment? Indeed, AI ROI has so far remained a largely theoretical phenomenon that everybody hopes will eventually materialize — although some companies are obviously getting a little restless while they wait.

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