source: simon willison: uber caps usage of ai tools like claude code to manage costs
level: business
uber has set a $1,500 monthly token spending limit per ai coding tool for all employees, a spokesperson told bloomberg. the cap applies only to agentic coding software such as cursor and anthropic's claude code, and spending on one tool does not affect the budget for another. the policy was introduced in recent months after the company blew through its 2026 ai budget in four months, a situation attributed to the rapid rise of token-intensive coding agents.
the limit is seen as a more sensible approach than internal leaderboards that encourage maximum ai usage. assuming an engineer uses two tools actively, the annual cap per person is $36,000. with median yearly compensation for uber software engineers in the us at $330,000, according to levels.fyi, the ai spending cap represents about 11% of that compensation. this provides a rough dollar value for the productivity gains uber expects from these tools.
simon willison, who reported the news, noted his own token usage costs about $1,000 per month against each of anthropic and openai, but he pays only $100 per provider due to subsidized individual plans. those plans are no longer available to larger companies like uber. under uber's new limits, willison would still have roughly $500 of monthly headroom per tool based on his current usage patterns.
why it matters: the cap signals how enterprises are managing runaway ai costs and sets a benchmark for valuing coding agent productivity relative to engineer salaries.
source: simon willison: uber caps usage of ai tools like claude code to manage costs