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Uber Already Burned Through Its 2026 AI Budget as AI Coding Tool Use Surges

·2026.04.20 11:13

Key point

Uber used up its AI budget early in the year as it expanded AI coding tool adoption.

Details

Uber exhausted its planned AI budget within just a few months of early 2026 as usage of AI coding tools surged.

Total R&D spending stood at around $3.4 billion, up 9% year-over-year. The company actively encouraged engineers to use Claude Code and Cursor, and even ran a usage-based leaderboard to accelerate adoption.

As a result, Claude Code has become the most widely used tool internally since late last year, while Cursor usage has plateaued. Uber is also preparing to trial OpenAI Codex to further broaden its tool lineup.

Currently, about 11% of backend code updates in production are written by AI agents, covering areas including vehicle dispatch, pricing, and bug fixes.

In the long run, Uber aims to move beyond assistive tools toward an agent engineers model, where AI handles coding, testing, and deployment. However, alongside productivity gains, cost pressure and shifts in engineers' roles are also growing.

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