Uber exhausts entire 2026 AI budget in four months

Uber's chief technology officer revealed this week that the company has exhausted its entire 2026 AI budget just four months into the year, driven by the runaway costs of Anthropic's Claude Code. For UK SMEs, it's a stark warning that giving developers autonomous AI agents without hard spending limits will turn a productivity win into a financial liability. AI agents now write 11% of Uber's live code updates.

Uber blows its 2026 AI budget by April

Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga told The Information [1] that the company's surging use of Anthropic's Claude Code has maxed out its annual AI budget. "I'm back to the drawing board because the budget I thought I would need is blown away already," Neppalli Naga said.

Uber encouraged a culture where engineers use AI as much as possible to speed up software development. The numbers are staggering. AI agents now write 11%