Uber questions AI ROI as token spend outpaces shipped features

Uber blew through its 2026 AI budget within four months, and leadership is openly skeptical that the spending is paying off. President and COO Andrew Macdonald told Rapid Response that token consumption for tools like Claude Code keeps climbing without a corresponding bump in consumer-facing features. Engineers may be shipping somewhat more, but he could not draw a defensible line from usage metrics to a measurable productivity gain.

The company’s R&D bill hit $3.4 billion in 2025, up 9 percent year over year, and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has framed slower hiring as the offset for that AI spend. Macdonald signaled that the tradeoff will increasingly be evaluated as token cost versus headcount, and that without clearer output gains the math gets harder to defend each quarter. The remarks are notable coming from a high-profile Anthropic customer, suggesting enterprise buyers are starting to push back on the assumption that more AI consumption automatically equals more value.