Uber CTO who sparked Tokenmaxxing panic has another lesson on using AI
Uber's CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga is shifting the company's AI strategy from simple task automation to comprehensive workflow redesign. By deploying 'Agentic Pods' of engineers directly into departments like finance and marketing, the company has achieved significant productivity gains.
Why it matters
This approach highlights a growing trend in corporate AI adoption where structural process optimization is prioritized over individual tool usage to justify high infrastructure costs.
Earlier this year, Uber’s CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga triggered a “tokenmaxxing panic” after revealing the company nearly blew through its 2026 budget for Anthropic’s Claude Code in just three months. Now, Naga is back with a new lesson. According to a report by Business Insider, Naga said that the biggest gains from AI don’t come from speeding up single tasks, but from redesigning the complete workflows. Naga said that Uber has started deploying its best AI engineers into departments like finance, legal, marketing, HR and procurement.
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