Uber president questions ROI on AI spending after budget exhausted early
By
Jess Weatherbed
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· 6 sourcesUber exhausted its entire 2026 AI budget in just four months, leading COO Andrew Macdonald to question the return on investment. Multiple sources reported that Macdonald expressed concern over the difficulty of connecting rising AI spending, particularly on Anthropic's Claude Code, to tangible consumer-facing innovations. Despite Uber being heavily AI-driven for pricing and routing, executives see no clear link between increased token consumption and meaningful feature delivery or productivity gains.
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Summary
Uber president Andrew Macdonald questions the return on investment from AI spending, noting that after exhausting the annual AI budget just four months into 2026, the company sees no clear link between rising token consumption for Claude Code and meaningful feature delivery to consumers. Macdonald states the connection between AI usage and productivity is not yet evident.
Key quotes
· 2 pulledThat link is not there yet, right?
I think maybe implicitly there is more that is getting shipped, but it's very hard to draw a line between one of those stats and, 'Okay, now we're actually...'
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