Uber president says AI spending harder to justify now

Uber’s president and chief operating officer, Andrew Macdonald, has publicly acknowledged that the company is struggling to connect its massive artificial intelligence spending with tangible results. Speaking in a recent interview with Rapid Response, Macdonald admitted that the link between rising AI costs and better features for riders and drivers remains unclear.

The company reportedly burned through its entire annual AI budget by April 2026,just four months into the year,prompting internal scrutiny over whether those investments are paying off. Macdonald specifically pointed to increased token consumption for Claude Code, an AI coding assistant, as an area where the return on investment is hard to measure. “That link is not there yet,” he said. “I think 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.’”

Macdonald’s remarks reflect a growing unease across the tech industry, where companies have poured billions into AI infrastructure and tools without clear evidence that the spending translates into improved user experiences or revenue growth. For Uber, the challenge is especially acute: the company operates at massive scale across ride-hailing, food delivery, and freight, and any inefficiency in its AI spending could ripple across its entire business.

The executive’s comments suggest that Uber is now demanding more accountability from its AI investments, pushing teams to demonstrate how tools like Claude Code actually make the platform better for customers. Without that proof, the company may need to rethink how aggressively it pursues AI-powered development.