Uber Slashes 3,300 Jobs in 10% Workforce Reduction as Robotaxi Competition Intensifies

AI or Overhiring? Uber Targets Middle Management With 10% Cut to Workforce

Uber is the latest Silicon Valley company to blame too much bureaucracy for job cuts. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent a memo to staff Wednesday announcing that the ride-hailing company was cutting about 10% of its workforce as part of a major reorganization. The company confirmed reports that roughly 3,300 employees, primarily middle managers, were being let go. "We are removing layers, simplifying team structures, refining our global location strategy, and focusing our people and investments against the biggest opportunities ahead of us," Khosrowshahi wrote in the memo. The layoffs come just weeks after Uber reported $14.2 billion in quarterly revenue and $2.4 billion in net income, both significantly higher than a year earlier. Despite healthy finances, Khosrowshahi wrote that the company's "growth has also brought complexity," including more layers, coordination, and fragmented ownership that no longer serve the company. As part of the overhaul, Uber is reducing the number of employees who sit seven or more layers below the CEO by about 20%. It is also cutting the number of "micro-teams," teams with just one or two direct reports, by nearly 50%. Khosrowshahi's memo echoes comments from other tech executives at companies like Amazon and Meta, who have cut jobs while arguing their companies have become too unwieldy to move and innovate quickly. AI could also be part of that equation, even though Khosrowshahi's memo doesn't mention it at all Bloomberg reported in June that Uber had put spending caps on some AI tools after blowing through its annual AI budget in just a few months. Meanwhile, Khosrowshahi said earlier this year that about 10% of Uber's code was being built by AI agents, while employees in other departments like legal and marketing were also increasingly using AI. At the time, the company said it would slow down hiring because of the growing benefits of AI, according to Bloomberg. Uber isn't the first tech company to link AI to a push for smaller, faster teams. When Block cut more than 4,000 jobs earlier this year, CEO Jack Dorsey wrote in a company memo that its intelligence tools were making it possible to operate with "smaller and flatter teams." Uber's cuts also come as Waymo's growing robotaxi business has begun to pose a threat to traditional ride-hailing. Alphabet's Waymo is now providing fully autonomous rides in 14 U.S. cities and is quickly expanding into more. In Atlanta, where Waymo rides are booked through Uber, some Uber and Lyft drivers told Axios that they have seen lower earnings, fewer ride requests, and longer waits between rides since Waymo launched in the city last year. Uber, meanwhile, is investing billions into its own robotaxi efforts. The company has struck partnerships with several companies including Lucid, Nuro, and Rivian to build its robotaxi fleet and has said it plans to invest more than $10 billion to "bring AVs to market at scale." In Wednesday's memo, Khosrowshahi wrote that the cuts would give Uber more capacity to invest in drivers, couriers and merchants, as well as to "build the autonomous future."

Uber slashing over 3K jobs as rise of robotaxis dent ride-hailing business

Uber Technologies will lay off about 3,300 employees, or 10% of staff, in its largest cuts since the COVID-19 pandemic, to better navigate the rise of robotaxis encroaching on its ride-hailing business. The cuts will flatten management layers, reducing organizational complexity that was built during a period of rapid growth but is now proving a hurdle to decision-making, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a note to employees on Wednesday. Unlike several tech executives, Khosrowshahi did not blame the cuts on AI even as a push to adopt the technology and the efficiencies it can unlock have driven large cuts in the industry this year, with tracking website layoffs.fyi putting the overall number at over 123,000 across nearly 390 companies. "A leaner organization will mean clearer ownership, faster decisions, and more time spent building rather than coordinating. It will also generate savings that we intend to reinvest in growth, innovation, and the capabilities that will matter most over the coming years," Khosrowshahi said. Uber shares rose nearly 1%. The stock has underperformed the S&P 500 and rival Lyft this year with a near 8% decline driven by worries about growing competition. DoorDash, Instacart and local delivery platforms have been putting pressure on Uber Eats, forcing the company to turn to deals such as its $14.8 billion Delivery Hero acquisition to build scale and compete better. Growing robotaxi competition Some of the concern stems from reports of growing tension between Uber and Waymo, the biggest US robotaxi operator, which runs its cars through Uber's app in Austin and Atlanta. Waymo has also been expanding into new markets without Uber, while rivals such as Tesla double down on robotaxis, feeding fears that a growing fleet of driverless cars could erode Uber's lucrative role as the middleman between vehicles and riders. To defend its position, Uber plans to put more than $10 billion into robotaxis in the coming years, backing the companies developing autonomous-driving systems and positioning itself as a go-to marketplace for driverless rides. "As AV tech and relationships grow and expand - there is a different type of employee needed to scale that business than one built around human drivers and all the cost to serve entailed with that, including management layers," said Adam Ballantyne, analyst at Uber shareholder Cambiar Investors. As part of Wednesday's overhaul, Uber will reduce the number of employees positioned seven or more reporting layers below the CEO by 20% and cut the number of teams with only one or two direct reports by nearly half. It will also combine some teams and concentrate much of its staff presence around key hubs. It will also limit fully remote roles to about 1% of staff, while maintaining its three-day office policy. The layoffs, first reported by Bloomberg News, are Uber's largest since May 2020, when a pandemic-driven demand collapse forced it to shed 6,700 jobs, or nearly a quarter of its staff. The company is also grappling with AI costs after employees used up their entire 2026 budget for the technology in just four months, according to media reports. Uber had about 34,000 employees globally at the end of last year, according to its annual report.

Uber slashes jobs as it braces for robotaxi revolution

STORY: :: What's behind the 10% layoffs at Uber? :: Akash Sriram, Tech Sector Specialist :: Bengaluru, India / September 3, 2026 "So, Uber's current restructuring kind of marks, quite a, quite a sharp, workforce reduction. And this is mostly because in the years after the pandemic, Uber underwent an aggressive growth phase. And, that meant, quite a lot of heads were added and they are just cutting about 3,300 positions really to remove a lot of middle management, a lot of layers between CEO Dara Khosroshahi and a lot of lower level employees, to kind of reduce the bloated headcount at the moment. Part of the savings that comes from the job cuts goes towards investment in robotaxi partnerships that are expected to materialize in the coming years and to kind of also hire some specialist talent that would help with the dispatch and deployment of robotaxis. That is expected to scale to thousands of vehicles in the coming years. So interestingly, a lot of tech companies in the past couple of years have attributed a lot of layoffs to AI. But this is not the case with Uber at the moment, it's solely an organizational realignment that Uber is doing. But at the same time, Uber has been seeing quite a lot of costs related to AI. Engineers at Uber use a lot of AI to build software and other functions, really. And, according to several media reports they have burned through an annual AI budget in about four months. And that's, that's probably concerning, but that's also an industry wide trend."