Uber Leader Questions Soaring AI Spend, With Murky Benefits

Uber's AI tab is climbing fast, but its top brass says the payoff isn't keeping pace. During the Rapid Response podcast that aired last week, Uber President and COO Andrew Macdonald said that his company blew through its AI budget for 2026 in just four months and is now struggling to tie that spending—particularly rising token use for AI coding tools like Claude Code—to concrete improvements for riders and drivers, per the Verge. "That link is not there yet," Macdonald said, adding that while internal metrics are soaring, it's "very hard" to show they translate into significantly more useful consumer features.

Uber shelled out $3.4 billion on research and development last year, up 9% from 2024. Earlier in May, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said heavier AI investment was being offset by hiring fewer people. Macdonald suggested that calculus may now be up for debate: Unless the company can clearly show that AI costs produce better functionality for users, he said, spending on tokens versus spending on head count becomes "harder to justify." He adds that the typical "user sitting there and coming up with interesting use cases" for AI also may not realize the technology isn't free, noting, "Somebody's paying the bill," per Business Insider.