Uber caps employee spending on AI coding tools at $1,500 per month per tool

Uber is limiting all employees to $1,500 in monthly token spending per AI coding tool, with separate budgets for each tool. The limits apply only to agentic coding software such as Cursor or Anthropic PBC's Claude Code, and have been instituted in recent months.

The cap implies an annual spending limit of $36,000 per engineer (assuming two actively used tools), which represents approximately 11% of the median yearly compensation package for Uber software engineers in the USA at $330,000.

The policy responds to Uber blowing its 2026 AI budget in four months, a situation attributed in part to unexpected popularity of token-burning coding agents (AI systems that autonomously perform coding tasks by consuming large numbers of tokens).