4 minBusiness
Uber cuts 3,300 jobs to streamline operations and fund robotaxi push
Uber announced it will cut 3,300 jobs, about 10% of its workforce, in its largest round of layoffs since the pandemic. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the move is meant to simplify the company's structure and free up resources for investments in autonomous vehicles.
Uber is eliminating 3,300 positions, roughly a tenth of its global workforce, in what the company describes as a restructuring effort designed to speed up decision-making and redirect capital toward its autonomous vehicle ambitions. The cuts, announced Wednesday by CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, mark the ride-hailing company's largest workforce reduction since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when it let go of about 3,700 employees.
In a letter to staff, Khosrowshahi acknowledged the difficulty of the decision, writing that it would have a real impact on colleagues and friends who have worked hard for Uber. He stressed that the layoffs reflect organizational priorities rather than individual performance, and that the company values the contributions of those affected. The CEO also pushed back against the notion that the cuts stem from economic weakness, noting that Uber has grown by orders of magnitude over the past five years. Instead, he said, the company had simply become too complex to manage efficiently.
The restructuring includes a 20% reduction in the number of employees who were seven or more layers removed from the CEO. Uber also halved the number of so-called micro-teams, groups with only one or two direct reports, and consolidated its delivery operations teams across restaurant, retail, and direct sectors into a single unit. Khosrowshahi said the changes were informed by employee feedback indicating that too much time was spent coordinating rather than building, shipping, or serving customers. The result, he wrote, is a simpler organizational chart geared toward building instead of managing.
Investors responded positively to the news, with Uber shares closing up 1.61% at $76.45. Khosrowshahi said the expected savings from the leaner structure will be reinvested in growth, innovation, and capabilities that will matter most in the coming years, with a particular focus on expanding the number of self-driving cars operating on Uber's network. He described the company's opportunity as enormous, citing plans to bring Uber to hundreds of millions more people, invest further in drivers, couriers, and merchants, and build what he called the autonomous future.
The job cuts come as Uber deepens its commitment to autonomous vehicles, a strategy shift that follows its earlier decision to sell its in-house research unit. Uber originally launched its Advanced Technologies Group in 2020 with a valuation of more than $7 billion, but sold the research arm to a startup by the end of that year after concluding it lacked the resources to develop its own robotaxis. The company then pivoted to deploying self-driving cars through partnerships with companies such as Rivian, Baidu, and Pony.ai.
Uber now expects to commit $10 billion to help bring autonomous vehicles to market at scale, with partners committing 120,000 cars to the network. Khosrowshahi described the goal during the company's second-quarter earnings call as making Uber the world's leading commercialization platform for autonomous vehicles. He said the company's recent results give it the ability to continue investing from a position of strength, pointing to autonomous vehicles as one of the largest opportunities in Uber's history.
Uber's president and chief operations officer, Andrew MacDonald, has also voiced strong expectations for the future of car ownership, saying last month that nobody will own a car in the next 15 to 20 years because vehicles are depreciating assets that sit idle most of the time. He suggested that other forms of transport, including self-driving cars and bikes, will fill the void, with autonomous vehicles playing a significant part in that transition.
