Uber Technologies Inc. has introduced spending limits on artificial intelligence tools used by its employees to control costs, after the company blew past its AI budget set for the entire year, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
The rideshare company now limits all staff members to $1,500 in monthly token spending per AI coding tool. The caps apply separately to each tool, meaning spending on one does not affect the budget for another. The restrictions, put in place in recent months, only cover agentic coding software such as Cursor or Anthropic PBC's Claude Code.
Each employee can monitor their usage through a dashboard that tracks activity across different tools. The company has created a process allowing workers to request permission to exceed their standard limit.
"We think this is all a pretty straightforward way to responsibly encourage agentic AI adoption and experimentation at scale across the company," the company's spokesperson reportedly told Bloomberg.
Chief Technology Officer Praveen Neppalli Naga told the Information in April that Uber had already used up its full-year AI budget. Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi said last month that approximately 10% of the company's code was submitted and built by AI agents, with the legal and marketing teams increasing their usage.
Last month, Uber stated it would slow its hiring pace compared to initial plans for the year due to productivity gains from internal AI use.
Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macdonald said on the Rapid Response podcast last month that it remains unclear whether increased AI tool usage is leading to more new features for Uber's customers. "It's very hard to draw a line between one of those stats and 'OK, now we're actually producing like 25% more useful consumer features,'" he said.
source https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/uber-caps-monthly-employee-ai-spending-at-1500-per-tool-amid-soaring-costs-4722651
