Uber president says AI spending is getting ‘harder to justify’

Andrew Macdonald, president of Uber Technologies Inc., at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. The annual tech conference runs from Nov. 10-13. Photographer: Zed Jameson/Bloomberg via Getty Images — Uber president Andrew Macdonald (pictured) says its “hard to draw a line” between AI spending and deliverable features. | Photo: Zed Jameson/*Bloomberg* via Getty Images

After reportedly exhausting its annual AI budget just four months into 2026, Uber is now questioning whether it's actually seeing meaningful returns on its investments. In an interview with Rapid Response, Uber president and chief operating officer Andrew Macdonald said the company isn't seeing a connection between rising token consumption for Claude Code and more useful features being delivered to consumers.

"That 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 producing 25 percent more useful consumer f …

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