AI NewsUber caps employee AI spending after blowing through budget in 4 months

Uber caps employee AI spending after blowing through budget in 4 months

3:16 AM IST · June 3, 2026

AI isgetting expensive, and somecompanies are cutting backon usage in an attempt to moderate costs. That cohort includes Uber, which recently instituted internal usage caps as a way to cut down on its exorbitant AI spend. Bloombergreportsthat the company has instituted a new rule that places a monthly $1,500 cap per employee and per agentic coding tool, including Anthropic’s Claude Code or Cursor. The usage is trackable via an internal dashboard that each employee has access to, although — in certain cases — the caps can be exceeded with permission, the company says. The news is perhaps not too surprising, since, in April, the company’s CTOrevealed thatthe ridesharing giant had blown through its entire annual AI budget in a matter of four months. That appears to have occurred after Uber encouraged staff to use AI “as much as possible” and even ranked their internal usage competitively on internal leader boards, The Informationpreviously reported. Uber’s COO, Andrew Macdonald, alsorecently cast doubton AI’s productivity impact, noting during a podcast appearance that “it’s very hard to draw a line” between AI usage and new consumer features. Uber’s cutback raises a broader issue that the tech industry is currently facing: As enterprises pour money into AI, where exactly is the return on investment? Indeed, AI ROI has so far remained alargely theoretical phenomenonthat everybody hopes will eventually materialize — although some companies are obviously getting a little restless while they wait.