Uber CEO Questioning Billions Spent on AI Slop

During a recent interview, Uber’s president and chief operating officer Andrew Macdonald expressed doubts about the company’s continued heavy investment in AI tools, such as Claude coding, citing a lack of clear return on the escalating costs.

On May 22, The Verge reported that Macdonald was featured on Rapid Response’s YouTube channel. In the conversation, he highlighted that, so far, there appears to be no direct correlation between the soaring expenses of AI technology and the development of tangible, consumer‑friendly features that could drive user engagement and revenue.

“That link is not there yet, right?” Macdonald remarked. “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 features.’ I think over the coming quarters and years, maybe that will become clearer, but I think today it’s hard, even if some of the underlying metrics are trending in a really astronomical direction.”

In April, Microsoft announced a significant shift in its billing model for GitHub Copilot, moving from a flat monthly fee to a per‑token usage charge. Around the same time, Anthropic revised its pricing for Claude, also adopting a usage‑based structure. These changes have dramatically increased the cost of employing AI tools, potentially tripling expenses compared to the period when tech giants subsidized usage and absorbed substantial losses.

“We’ll soon have to discuss token consumption and its associated costs in relation to headcount,” Macdonald remarked during the interview. “If you can’t clearly link the number of tokens used to tangible features and functionality delivered to users, the trade‑off becomes increasingly difficult to defend.”

According to a report by The Information, later corroborated by Uber itself, the company exhausted its entire 2026 AI budget in roughly four months. The rapid burn stemmed from underestimating both user adoption and the expense of providing all employees with AI access. In 2025, Uber also invested $3.4 billion in AI research and development, underscoring its massive outlay on the technology. Meanwhile, the executive overseeing the initiative appeared on a podcast, shrugging off questions about the venture’s long‑term value with a casual, “I’m not sure it’s worth it yet.”

These developments suggest that the AI boom may soon hit a snag, and those who have championed the technology might find themselves reassessing their strategies. The prospect of a market recalibration has many watching closely, eager to see how the narrative unfolds.