The cuts hit Uber AI Solutions, a unit the company has been building aggressively since late 2024 to compete with established data labeling giants
Uber Technologies has parted ways with two senior figures inside its AI data labeling division, according to a Bloomberg report. The move is notable not because the departures are unusual in tech, but because of where they land: inside one of Uber’s most deliberate strategic bets of the past two years.
The division in question is Uber AI Solutions, and Uber has been pouring resources into it since the unit launched in November 2024.
What Uber AI Solutions actually is #
Here is the thing about data labeling: every AI model that learns to recognize a stop sign, a pedestrian, or a lidar point cloud needs someone to first tell it what those things are. That work, tagging and annotating raw data at industrial scale, is what Uber AI Solutions sells.
The unit launched in November 2024 under the name Scaled Solutions, initially rolling out across five markets. The rebranding to Uber AI Solutions followed as the division expanded its scope and ambition.
By June 2025, the division had grown to operate in more than 30 countries, serving over 50 corporate clients.
Uber’s pitch to the market is fairly clever. The company already has tens of thousands of gig workers in its driver network. Some of those workers perform data labeling tasks during vehicle downtime, earning between $20 and $200 per hour depending on task complexity. Uber is essentially monetizing idle capacity it already owns.
The division is taking direct aim at Scale AI, the dominant independent player in the data labeling space.
The leadership situation and what led here #
The two departures Bloomberg reported follow an earlier exit from the unit’s broader leadership structure. Gus Fuldner, who served as Uber’s senior vice president of safety and core services and oversaw Uber AI Solutions, left the company in January 2026.
Uber has not publicly confirmed the details of the two most recent dismissals, and the company has not commented on the reasons.
The October 2025 acquisition of Segments.ai added another layer to the story. Segments.ai was a Belgian data-labeling startup specializing in lidar and multi-sensor annotation, exactly the kind of high-precision work needed for autonomous vehicles and robotics applications. The founders and team from Segments.ai joined Uber AI Solutions as part of the deal, injecting new technical talent into the division right around the time broader leadership turbulence was beginning.
What this means for Uber’s AI strategy #
Uber is not an AI company in the way that Anthropic or OpenAI are. But it is a company that runs on logistics, matching, pricing, and routing algorithms that need constant refinement. Building an internal data labeling capability that also generates revenue from external clients is a way to offset the cost of that infrastructure while positioning for a market that is only getting larger.
Uber is betting it can supply labeled training data at competitive cost, using a workforce model that incumbents like Scale AI cannot easily replicate.
A division that has lost multiple senior leaders in a short period needs stable management to convert its operational footprint, more than 30 countries, tens of thousands of taskers, 50-plus corporate clients, into durable revenue.
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