Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify' as token consumption rises without clear consumer benefits

Uber exhausted its annual AI budget just four months into 2026 and is now questioning whether its AI investments are delivering meaningful returns, according to Uber president and chief operating officer Andrew Macdonald.

Macdonald said the company cannot draw a clear connection between rising token consumption for Claude Code and more useful features being delivered to consumers, even as underlying metrics trend upward.

Uber spent $3.4 billion on research and development in 2025, 9 percent more than the previous year. The company is offsetting increased AI investments by hiring fewer human employees, making the trade-off between token costs and headcount harder to justify without demonstrated feature improvements.