Uber to Lay Off 3,300 Employees, Accelerate AI and Robotaxi Investments

Uber has announced it will lay off 3,300 employees, or 10 percent of its global corporate workforce. It's the company's largest round of job cuts since the pandemic, revealed in an internal email from CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who also announced increased investment in artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles.

Scale of the Cuts

The layoffs will primarily affect corporate and managerial employees, including those in roles more than seven levels below the CEO. The company wants to cut the number of management layers and simplify decision-making, which in practice means eliminating many mid-level management positions.

Simplifying the Structure

In his email to staff, Khosrowshahi wrote bluntly that the company's growth had led to excessive organizational complexity. Uber will cut by half the number of so-called micro-teams, units where a manager oversees just one or two people. In addition, nearly 99 percent of staff will be required to work on-site, with remote work limited to about 1 percent of employees.

Growth brought complexity: more layers, more coordination, more fragmented ownership, and structures that used to work but no longer do - Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber

Betting on Robotaxis

Alongside the cuts, Uber is redirecting resources toward ride-sharing, delivery, and above all robotaxis. The company has pledged more than $10 billion for the development of its autonomous fleet in the coming years, a response to growing competition from Waymo, which already offers driverless rides through the Uber app in Atlanta and Austin, and from Tesla, which is developing its Cybercab robotaxi program.

Khosrowshahi described the goal of the restructuring as building toward the company's autonomous future, stressing that a leaner organization should translate into faster decisions and less time spent on internal coordination.

A leaner organization means clearer accountability, faster decisions, and more time building instead of coordinating - Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber

Financial Context

The layoffs aren't the result of financial trouble. Uber is growing: 2025 revenue reached about $52 billion, and second-quarter 2026 revenue hit $14.2 billion, up 12 percent year over year. The company attributes the cuts to the need to simplify its structure, not to cost-cutting in response to weak results.

It's the latest step in a series of automation-driven changes to Uber's employment policy. In July 2026, the company cut its customer service team by 10 percent, replacing some tasks with AI-based solutions, and in May it announced a hiring slowdown. Alongside the layoffs, Uber immediately ceased operations in Nigeria and Uganda, a move a company spokesperson described as limited strictly to those two markets, with no impact on its other operations in Africa.

Polish Perspective

The restructuring primarily concerns Uber's global corporate teams, so its direct impact on the company's Polish operations remains unclear. Still, the trend is visible in Poland too: tech companies are increasingly citing shifting budgets toward automation and AI-based tools, rather than weak financial results alone, as the reason for cutting jobs in administrative and managerial departments.

For the transportation industry, the signal is clear: the race for the driverless ride market is picking up speed faster than many analysts assumed even a year ago. Uber, which had built its edge mainly as an intermediary connecting drivers with passengers, is increasingly pushing its own presence in the autonomous segment, aware that competitors like Waymo and Tesla could eventually diminish the role of traditional drivers in its business model.