{"id":439403,"date":"2026-04-17T05:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T05:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/439403\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T05:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T05:20:12","slug":"ubers-anthropic-ai-push-hits-a-wall-cto-says-budget-struggles-despite-3-4b-spend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/439403\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber’s Anthropic AI Push Hits A Wall\u2014CTO Says Budget Struggles Despite $3.4B Spend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Uber Technologies, Inc<\/strong> is learning the hard way that scaling AI isn’t just about speed\u2014it’s about cost. Despite spending $3.4 billion on research and development, the company has already exhausted its planned AI budget just months into 2026.<\/p>\n

According to The Information, Chief Technology Officer Praveen Neppalli Naga<\/strong> said Uber is now “back to the drawing board” after a surge in the use of AI coding tools, particularly\u00a0Anthropic<\/strong>‘s\u00a0Claude Code, has blown past internal expectations.<\/p>\n

Don’t Miss:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Uber didn’t hold back on AI adoption. Engineers were actively encouraged to use tools like Claude Code and Cursor<\/strong>, even ranking them on internal leaderboards based on usage. That push drove rapid adoption\u2014but also a sharp rise in costs.<\/p>\n

Naga noted that Claude Code has quickly become the dominant tool, with usage surging since late last year, while Cursor has plateaued. Uber is now preparing to test OpenAI<\/strong>‘s Codex<\/strong> as it expands its AI stack further.<\/p>\n

The financial pressure is already building. Uber’s R&D expenses rose 9% to $3.4 billion in 2025, and the company expects that figure to keep climbing\u2014suggesting AI may be as much a cost driver as a productivity lever.<\/p>\n

Trending:\u00a0Avoid the #1 Investing Mistake: How Your \u2018Safe’ Holdings Could Be Costing You Big Time<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The payoff is starting to show. Around 11% of Uber’s live backend code updates are now written by AI agents, up sharply in just a few months. These systems power everything from ride-matching to pricing and bug fixes.<\/p>\n

Naga said the longer-term vision goes further. He sees a shift toward “agent engineers”\u2014AI systems that don’t just assist but fully handle coding, testing and deployment, with other AI tools supervising the process.<\/p>\n

Hiring hasn’t slowed yet. But as AI takes on more of the workload, Uber’s aggressive push raises a bigger question: how long before the engineers themselves start taking a back seat?<\/p>\n

Read Next:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Image via Shutterstock<\/p>\n

UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily<\/strong><\/a>, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets.<\/p>\n

Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uber Technologies, Inc is learning the hard way that scaling AI isn’t just about speed\u2014it’s about cost. Despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,11669,18,19,17,194737,11031,82,194738],"class_list":["post-439403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-claude-code","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-praveen-neppalli-naga","tag-research-and-development","tag-technology","tag-uber-technologies"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116418368253389792","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}