Uber institutes $1,500 monthly cap per employee on AI tool spending after exhausting annual budget in four months

Uber recently instituted a new rule placing a monthly $1,500 cap per employee and per agentic coding tool (such as Anthropic's Claude Code or Cursor), with usage trackable via an internal dashboard and the ability to exceed caps with permission.

The company's CTO revealed in April that Uber had blown through its entire annual AI budget in four months, after the company encouraged staff to use AI 'as much as possible' and ranked internal usage competitively on internal leader boards.

Uber's COO Andrew Macdonald recently cast doubt on AI's productivity impact, noting that 'it's very hard to draw a line' between AI usage and new consumer features, reflecting broader uncertainty across the tech industry about AI return on investment.