Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI budget in four months, and it's not the only tech giant scrambling to contain runaway spending on coding tools
Uber’s entire AI budget for 2026 was gone by April. The year isn’t even half over.
The ride-hailing giant has now imposed a $1,500 monthly spending cap per employee on agentic coding tools like Claude, after its Chief Technology Officer disclosed that four months of unchecked usage had consumed what was supposed to last twelve. Meta and Amazon are following suit with their own restrictions, part of a broader reckoning across Big Tech over just how expensive it is to let employees run wild with AI.
The ‘tokenmaxxing’ problem #
That’s reportedly what happened at Meta, where employees engaged in a practice dubbed “tokenmaxxing,” essentially competitive overuse of AI tools, resulting in the consumption of tens of trillions of tokens.
Both Meta and Amazon had set up internal AI-usage leaderboards, originally designed to encourage productivity and adoption. The leaderboards have since been removed at both companies.
Meta indicated in mid-June 2026 that it plans to limit AI tool usage, citing an “exponential increase” in costs. Amazon has signaled similar restrictions.
A broader industry pattern #
Uber, Meta, and Amazon aren’t alone in pumping the brakes. Walmart, Microsoft, and AT&T have all imposed similar usage restrictions as per-employee AI costs climbed into the thousands of dollars monthly.
Uber’s situation is particularly striking. Burning through an annual budget in four months means the company was spending at roughly three times the rate it had planned for. The $1,500 monthly cap that Uber implemented on June 2, 2026, represents an attempt to impose discipline without killing adoption entirely.
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