Uber Technologies confirmed on Thursday that it is eliminating one in ten roles within its global community operations division, explicitly linking the cuts to the deployment of artificial intelligence for the first time. Remote employees in the affected unit have also been instructed to relocate to a city with an Uber office and work on-site three days a week, according to a company spokesperson.

In an internal memo sent to staff on Wednesday, Megha Yethadka, Uber's vice president of global community operations, wrote that AI presented 'a massive opportunity' to accelerate output and scale customer solutions, but that the organisation had become 'too complex and siloed' to support it. 'We cannot scale frontier technology on top of fragmented processes,' she stated. A spokesperson said the changes were designed to 'simplify operations, strengthen in-person collaboration, and continue to embrace AI.'

The layoffs follow a separate reduction in June, when Uber cut 23 per cent of its human resources division—less than 1 per cent of its global workforce—which the company said at the time was unrelated to AI. As The Times of India noted, the current round places Uber alongside firms such as Block and Oracle that have also cited artificial intelligence when announcing job cuts this year. An analysis by UK-based investment firm TradingPlatforms, cited by The Independent, found that AI-driven layoffs have accelerated across the tech sector in 2026, with Oracle cutting over 25,000 jobs and Monday.com reducing its workforce by 20 per cent on the same day as Uber's announcement.

According to internal company data seen by The Times of India, Uber's own AI spending has drawn internal scrutiny. Chief Technology Officer Praveen Neppalli Naga disclosed in April that the company exhausted its entire 2026 budget for the coding tool Claude Code within four months, with per-engineer monthly bills reaching $2,000 for heavy users. Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macdonald has publicly questioned whether rising token consumption translates into useful features, and his earlier warning that AI costs would eventually be weighed against headcount now appears to be materialising in the restructuring, the report noted.

Uber's financial results, as reported by Lenta.ru, show steady revenue growth in recent quarters, but net profit fell to $263 million in early 2026 from $1.78 billion a year earlier. The company has said it will slow hiring as it invests more in AI, though over 500 engineering roles remain advertised, including positions supporting robotaxi partnerships.