Uber CEO says the company is slowing hiring as it invests in AI

• Uber is using AI agents to produce about 10% of the code it produces, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said.
• It's one way that he said AI is creating "employees with superpowers."
• Uber's CTO previously said that it spent its entire 2026 budget for Claude Code last month.

Uber is getting a big coding assist from agents, and it's "metering headcount growth" as it leans into AI investment.

Roughly 10% of Uber's code changes are produced by autonomous agents, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on the company's first-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

Human employees still check the code before it gets added to a repository, the CEO added. Even so, he said, it shows the productivity gains that are possible with AI.

Uber has used AI to price ridesharing trips and match drivers with passengers for years, Khosrowshahi said. Now, employees in different areas of the company are using AI tools internally, he said.

"We're seeing uptake of these tools, whether it's our legal team or marketing team or developers," the CEO said. "We think it's creating kind of employees with superpowers."

Uber is increasing its investment in AI and paying for it by hiring less, he added.

Uber reported its first-quarter earnings results on Wednesday, with revenue of $13.2 billion and gross bookings up 25%. The company expects second-quarter EPS to grow between 31% and 38%. Shares of Uber were up about 6% in pre-market trading.

Uber has increased its AI spending after it "underestimated the amount of impact the AI tools could have" in budgeting that it did at the end of 2025, CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy said on Wednesday's call. Praveen Neppalli Naga, the company's chief technology officer, said last month that Uber had already spent all of its 2026 budget for Claude Code.

All that added investment in AI could pay off if Uber's employees become more productive, Khosrowshahi said.

"If every person at this company can increase their throughput by 20%, 30%, 50%, 100%, then I think metering headcount growth and leaning in on AI investment is going to be well worth it," he said.

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