Uber caps engineers' AI spending at 1,500 tokens per month

Uber has implemented monthly spending limits on certain artificial intelligence tools used by its software engineers, a move to control costs after the company exhausted its annual AI budget within the first four months of the year. The new policy caps employee spending at 1,500 tokens per month for each specific "agentic" coding tool, such as Cursor or Anthropic's Claude Code.

The limits, instituted in recent months, are tracked via an internal dashboard accessible to all staff. Employees can request permission to exceed their cap if needed. A company spokesperson stated the policy is intended to responsibly encourage AI adoption and experimentation at scale across the company.

This shift follows an initial company strategy that aggressively promoted AI usage, including internal leaderboards to rank employee engagement. Chief Technology Officer Praveen Neppalli Naga revealed in April that Uber had already surpassed its full-year budget for AI spending, forcing a reassessment.

While the company reports increased AI integration, with executives noting about 10% of code is now submitted by AI agents, questions remain about the technology's direct impact on productivity and consumer...