Uber bets $10B on other people's AI while cutting its own

A job shrunk to one-fifth, then cut

One laid-off Uber employee said an AI tool had cut the time his job took to one-fifth of what it used to be ¹. He was among 3,300 people dismissed on 2 September, a tenth of the workforce and the deepest round since the pandemic ²³. In the Bay Area, 390 of those jobs end on 2 November, 253 of them at the San Francisco headquarters ⁴.

The $10 billion U-turn

The same company plans to put about $10 billion into robotaxis↗: $7.5 billion committed to buying autonomous vehicles, plus potentially more than $2.5 billion in equity stakes in Lucid, Rivian and others ⁵. "A company that never owned a car now has more than $7 billion in vehicle purchase commitments, its own depots, and a double-digit stake in Lucid," said Spencer Penn, a former Tesla and Waymo executive ⁵.

Outside AI gets billions, inside AI got cut

Inside the building, the budget moved the other way. Former staff say Uber cut or reduced credits to services like Claude↗ in the first half of 2026, after executives said the budget was spent with no productivity gains to match ¹. The September memo↗ never mentioned AI ²; July's cut of 10% of customer-service roles did cite it ²³.

A week later, Khosrowshahi told an investor conference the restructuring caught "real tailwinds as it relates to productivity, whether it is AI," and said he wanted "more doers versus managers" ¹.

At Uber, the AI that gets funded now has wheels, and the AI inside the building had its credits cut.

An asset-light balance sheet meets a fleet bill

Uber's capital spending never crossed $100 million in any quarter from late 2023 through June ⁶; the vehicle commitment alone is more than 100 times its $70 million spend last quarter ⁶. The bill lands on shareholders who bought an asset-light marketplace: they now underwrite the depots, the stakes and the fleet.

The fleet money follows hardware, tied to deployment milestones rather than paid upfront ⁹. Lucid's order began at 20,000 Gravity SUVs, was raised to a 35,000-vehicle minimum, and came with a stake Uber has built past 11% ⁷. Rivian gets up to $1.2 billion through 2031, contingent on milestones, against 10,000 R2 robotaxis plus rights to 40,000 more by 2030 ⁸; Nuro, whose software drives the Lucid fleet, carries about $500 million ⁷.

Rivian lost $3.6 billion in 2025 and expects to deliver at most 70,000 vehicles this year ⁸. Uber's order is the robotaxi demand line no other customer is writing.

Uber's defense: layers, not AI

The company's account is organizational, not algorithmic: 20% fewer employees sitting seven or more layers from the CEO, micro-teams nearly halved, savings "reinvested in growth, innovation" ². The one destination the memo does name is the "autonomous future" ²³.

Khosrowshahi told a Goldman Sachs conference on 10 September that the savings would go to "lowering prices, improving selection," a cut made "from a position of strength"; he disclosed about $10 million of personal stock purchases↗ the same day ¹⁰. Second-quarter revenue rose 12% to $14.2 billion ³⁶. Uber has not said the layoffs fund the robotaxi program, and nothing in the record says they do.

The clock Uber does not set

Waymo took about a quarter of San Francisco ride-hailing in roughly 20 months, has already ended the Phoenix partnership, and is working to exit a contract that runs to May 2028 ⁵⁷. Tesla's Cybercab began Austin rides on 4 September ⁵. Uber promises Lucid-built robotaxis on Bay Area and Los Angeles streets this year↗, toward 28 cities by 2028 ⁵¹¹, with the Rivian fleet following in 2028 ⁸.

Waymo bets on safety, Tesla on price, Uber on availability, "and none of these companies gets to set that clock," Penn said ⁵. The first Lucid passenger rides are the earliest observable test of the $10 billion: if paying passengers are not aboard in the Bay Area or Los Angeles before New Year, the pivot's timetable slips with them.