Uber President Says It's Becoming Increasingly Hard to 'Justify' AI Spending

Uber is investing aggressively in AI—having nearly exhausted its annual AI budget just 4 months into 2026—but is raising questions about the real return on investment (ROI).

Andrew Macdonald, Uber's COO, pointed out that even though token consumption for tools like Claude Code is surging, this isn't directly translating into an increase in useful features delivered to consumers. He explained that even as the metrics move in an astronomical direction, it's very difficult to prove a correlation with the functional value consumers actually experience.

Uber spent $3.4 billion on R&D in 2025, up 9% year-over-year. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company is offsetting AI investment costs by reducing new hires.

Macdonald emphasized that going forward, the correlation between token consumption costs and headcount needs to be carefully examined. He noted that without a direct link to the launch of useful features, it will become difficult to justify the current level of AI spending.