Uber limits AI spending after blowing its budget in four months

Uber has decided to tighten its belt when it comes to artificial intelligence. After burning through its annual budget in just four months, the company has decided to cap AI spending for its employees. According to Bloomberg, each staff member now has a monthly limit of $1,500 to use coding tools, such as Anthropic's Claude Code or Cursor. And that's not all: all usage is monitored through an internal dashboard. Of course, there are exceptions, but only with special permission.

This news is not exactly a shock. In April, Uber's CTO had already revealed that the company burned its AI budget by encouraging employees to use these tools to the max. They even created internal leaderboards to see who used them the most. But COO Andrew Macdonald threw cold water on it by questioning the actual impact of AI on productivity, stating it is difficult to see a clear line between AI usage and new features for consumers.

This containment by Uber brings to light a larger issue facing the tech sector: with so much money being poured into AI, where is the return on investment? So far, AI ROI has been more of a hope than a tangible reality, and some companies are already getting impatient while waiting for concrete results.