Uber president questions whether the company’s AI spending is paying off

In short: Uber’s president says the company is spending more on AI, but cannot clearly show it is leading to better or more useful product updates.

What's going on

Uber president and chief operating officer Andrew Macdonald said it is getting “harder to justify” the company’s AI spending. He made the comments in an interview with Rapid Response.

Macdonald said Uber is not seeing a clear link between higher “token consumption” and more useful features being shipped to customers. Tokens are small pieces of text that an AI system reads and writes, and using more tokens usually means higher bills (like paying more when you use more mobile data).

The Verge reports that Uber used up its annual AI budget just four months into 2026. Macdonald pointed to the company’s growing use of Claude Code, an AI coding assistant, and said it is “hard to draw a line” between usage numbers and results that customers can feel in the app.

Uber’s broader spending on research and development totaled $3.4 billion in 2025, up 9 percent from the year before. Earlier this month, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company is trying to offset rising AI investment by hiring fewer people.

What to watch

Macdonald said the connection between AI costs and real product gains might become clearer “over the coming quarters and years.” For now, the key question is whether Uber can measure AI spending the way it measures staff, by showing it leads to specific improvements for riders, drivers, and delivery customers.

Source: The Verge AI