Uber has introduced spending limits on employee use of artificial intelligence tools after the company exhausted its annual AI budget within the first four months of the year, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The company has set a monthly cap of $1,500 per employee for each agentic coding tool, including products such as Claude Code and Cursor. Employees can track their usage through an internal dashboard and may exceed the limit with managerial approval.
Praveen Neppalli Naga
The move follows comments made in April by Uber Chief Technology Officer Praveen Neppalli Naga, who said the company's annual AI budget had been depleted within months. Uber had previously encouraged employees to use AI extensively and reportedly tracked usage through internal leaderboards.
The decision comes amid growing scrutiny over the costs associated with deploying generative AI tools at scale.
Uber Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macdonald recently questioned whether the company's increasing investment in AI has translated into measurable gains in productivity or customer-facing innovation.
Speaking on a podcast, Macdonald said it remained difficult to establish a direct connection between AI adoption and the development of new consumer features.
"It's very hard to draw a line" between AI usage and new consumer features, he said.
Macdonald also noted that while there may be broader productivity gains, linking AI usage metrics to tangible outcomes remains challenging.
"That link is not there yet," he said, referring to the relationship between the company's use of coding assistants such as Claude Code and product innovation.
"Maybe implicitly there's 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 like 25% more useful consumer features'," he added.
Macdonald said the costs associated with AI become harder to justify when companies are unable to demonstrate a direct impact on the products and services delivered to customers.
The development comes as several technology companies reassess their spending on generative AI amid concerns over escalating infrastructure and usage costs.
Reports have suggested that some firms have begun tightening controls on AI-related expenditure, while others are reconsidering internal incentive programs designed to encourage widespread adoption of AI tools.