/AI10h ago

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says the company spent its entire annual AI budget in a single quarter

The spending spike prompted Uber to meter headcount growth.

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Derek Thompson
Patrick OShaughnessy#1862
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Patrick OShaughnessy@patrick_oshag#1862inAI

Dara (CEO of Uber) on their AI spend:

"We blew through our AI budget in a quarter, for the whole year. It is forcing us to adjust.

We are going to meter headcount increases because to the extent that my engineers are getting much more efficient, their throughput is increasing. There's a cost to that, and it's a significant cost.

AI adoption has been occurring in all parts of the business –– whether it's engineers and how they scope projects, how they build, debugging, platform migrations.

I'm pushing the teams to fundamentally use the power of AI to rebuild systems and processes from the bottoms up.

I do think it's a combination for us right now of encouraging adoption, but then driving efficiency.

We're using the more expensive models to explore. Once we scale some of these experiences, we'll look to bring in more efficient models that are more efficient on a token basis or are open source."

Patrick OShaughnessy@patrick_oshag

My conversation with @dkhos, CEO of Uber.

Dara took over in 2017, when Uber was losing roughly $4.5B a year.

Today the company generates $10B in free cash flow and is worth about $150B.

We discuss: - How Daniel Ek convinced him to take the job - How Uber spent a full year of its AI budget in a single quarter - Uber's approach to autonomous vehicles - Drones, hotels, and building a superapp - Lessons from Allen & Co, Barry Diller, and Reed Hastings

Enjoy!

Timestamps 0:00 Intro 3:44 Bringing Order to Uber’s Chaos 7:22 Managing Stress and Going All In 14:28 Why Uber Is at the Center of AI and Physical 22:39 How to Win in Autonomous Vehicles 32:25 The Trillion-Dollar AV Opportunity 37:05 Drones, Robotaxis, and Global Adoption 38:20 Uber Eats, Uber One, and Aggregating Supply 47:00 The Future of the Uber App 55:55 Lessons from Barry Diller

9:36 AM · Jun 3, 2026 · 272.1K Views
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Derek Thompson@DKThomp

Very kind of Dara to sprinkle some tasty morsels into every AI camp's feeding trough

For the AI-value skeptics: They blew thru their annual AI budget in a quarter and they're already pivoting

For skeptics who say the frontier labs have no moat: Once Uber figures out what works, Dara says they'll switch to "efficient models or even "open source."

For the AI boosters: He's still pushing teams to "fundamentally use the power of AI to rebuild systems and processes from the bottoms up"

Patrick OShaughnessy@patrick_oshag

Dara (CEO of Uber) on their AI spend:

"We blew through our AI budget in a quarter, for the whole year. It is forcing us to adjust.

We are going to meter headcount increases because to the extent that my engineers are getting much more efficient, their throughput is increasing. There's a cost to that, and it's a significant cost.

AI adoption has been occurring in all parts of the business –– whether it's engineers and how they scope projects, how they build, debugging, platform migrations.

I'm pushing the teams to fundamentally use the power of AI to rebuild systems and processes from the bottoms up.

I do think it's a combination for us right now of encouraging adoption, but then driving efficiency.

We're using the more expensive models to explore. Once we scale some of these experiences, we'll look to bring in more efficient models that are more efficient on a token basis or are open source."

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