Uber Discovers AI Bills Don't Pay Themselves, Demands Receipts

Uber's CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga says the era of 'tokenmaxxing'—spending ever more on AI tokens assuming more usage equals more value—is ending. Uber exhausted its entire 2026 Claude Code budget by April, and president Andrew Macdonald says there's no link between higher AI spending and shipping successful features. The company is shifting toward discipline and demanding clearer evidence of value, joining others like Atlassian and GitHub in hitting the brakes on unchecked AI consumption. The broader industry signal: model makers' valuations assume spending only rises, but heavy users are now asking what they're actually getting for the invoice.