Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify the money spent on AI tokenmaxxing

• Uber’s COO says it’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify investments in AI at the company.

• He said he hasn’t seen commensurate productivity gains from rising AI costs.

• Uber’s CTO said in April that the company had exhausted its Claude Code budget through 2026.

A senior Uber executive said AI was not giving the company a run for its money.

One Quick Response interview Uber’s chief operating officer, Andrew Macdonald, said in a statement released Saturday that it is becoming harder to justify AI costs within the company.

Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli said Naga went viral after he told The Information in an April interview that Uber had already exhausted its Claude Code budget for 2026.

The comment led to what he described as a “head-banging moment” and sparked controversy on the matter. AI token consumption the trade-offs this creates, such as within the company and headcount.

He said that based on his conversations with Uber’s senior engineering leaders, he realized that higher token usage did not translate into a commensurate increase in useful consumer features.

“That connection isn’t there yet, is it?” he said. “I think indirectly more things are being released, but it’s very hard to draw a line between one of those statistics and ‘Okay, now we’re actually producing 25% more useful consumer features.'”

He said it’s harder to justify trade-in costs from AI because he can’t make a direct connection. Earlier this month, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an earnings call: Uber was slowing down hiring to counter its investments in artificial intelligence.

Macdonald added that AI without payment might appear to be free if “you’re just a user who sits there and comes up with interesting use cases.” But in the end, the company pays the bill.

While Big Tech is working hard on tokenmaxxing by using artificial intelligence as much as possible and to evaluate employees With the use of artificial intelligence, some companies are starting to go the other way.

Duolingo for examplebacked off its decision to include the use of AI in performance evaluations after employees asked whether they should use AI just for the sake of it.

“I felt like we were trying to force something that didn’t fit in some cases, rather than being held accountable for the actual outcome,” Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said in a podcast interview in April.

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