Uber's CTO Just Blew His Entire Claude Code 2026 Budget - But He’s Still Hiring Engineers.

Uber's CTO Nepali Naga revealed that the company has blown through its entire 2026 Claude Code budget, with R&D expenses rising 9% to $3.4 billion in 2025. Despite this budget overrun, Uber has no plans to slow down engineer hiring. The company has seen dramatic adoption of AI in their development process, with 11% of live code updates now written by AI agents, up from a fraction of a percent just three months ago. Uber's CTO envisions a future where AI agents take on the full role of software engineers, transforming the field into AI agent engineering. The company has embraced AI prototyping across teams, leading to greater exploration of ideas, faster alignment on products, and unblocked execution. Anthropic released updates to Claude Code including a new desktop app with sidebar functionality, terminal integration, and a new 'routines' feature for automated workflows. Google responded with their own AI Studio updates featuring design previews for app development and a new Gemini desktop app built using anti-gravity technology. The Stanford AI Index report revealed that one-third of surveyed organizations expect AI to reduce their workforce, though some tech leaders like Mark Anderson argue AI will create a jobs boom. Square's Block revealed ManagerBot, an agentic layer in merchant dashboards that proactively manages inventory, scheduling, and marketing, leading users to consolidate more business operations onto Square's platform.