After reportedly exhausting its annual AI budget in just four months in 2026, Uber is now questioning whether it is actually getting a meaningful return on its investment. in an interview with Instant reactionAndrew MacDonald, Uber’s president and chief operating officer, said the company is not seeing any connection between increased token consumption for cloud codes and more useful features being provided to consumers.
“That link isn’t there yet, right? I think there’s probably more indirectly that’s being sent, but it’s very hard to draw a line between one of those statistics and, ‘Okay, now we’re actually creating 25 percent more useful consumer features,'” McDonald said. “I think in the coming quarters and years, maybe it will become clear, but I think it’s hard today, even if there’s some underlying The metrics should be trending in a truly astronomical direction.”
Uber plans to spend $3.4 billion on research and development efforts in 2025, a 9 percent increase from last year. Earlier this month, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company was offsetting its growing AI investments by hiring fewer human employees.
“We need to start talking about token consumption and the associated costs versus headcount,” MacDonald said. “So if you’re not really able to draw a straight line of how many useful features and functionality you’re sending your users, it becomes harder to justify that tradeoff.”
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