Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#101

Post by _alternator_ » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

gjulianm wrote: post #28

abuani wrote: post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

Several options on how to burn that amount of money without being specifically looking to tokenmaxx - Agents that spawn other agents - Telling agents to go look at the entire codebase or at a lot of documents constantly - MCP/API use with a lot of noise - Loops where the agent is running unattended. I do think it's not really responsible use and a loop where the agent is trying to fix CI for one hour for something th…

One of the new dynamics is a loop between a "code review" LLM and a "fix LLM". It's super annoying because the code review LLM often finds more bugs on a follow-up review that were there from the beginning, but at least I can loop both until check go green.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#102

Post by swiftcoder » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

fnordpiglet wrote: post #86

swiftcoder wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are they just copy/pasting their entire ticket description into Claude Code and having it iterate until they land on something that works? That is exactly what they are doing, yes

To be fair, taking an average SWE at $160k/y, and spending $1k/m, and offloading mechanical ticket work from their working set sounds like a bargain to me. They could be spending the time on design and planning and working on new things, figuring out how to save costs in optimizations. In fact for every soul sucking mechanical task you offload, the better of you are overall. It’s not like AI is the first time this ha…

> pasting the ticket in and letting a machine do the work for a fraction of the cost was the right choice

If it were producing equivalent outcomes, sure. So far I haven't personally seeing strong evidence for that. LLMs do write code pretty competently at this point, but actually solving the correct problem, and without introducing unintended consequences, is a different matter entirely

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#103

Post by steveBK123 » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #87

abuani wrote: post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

I spend 400-500 dollars per day during active development at this point. However with more aggressive task breakdowns I can spend ~5k per day. These spend rates are in part due to operating on a larger code base. Operating on a larger code base means more time searching and understanding the code, tests, test output. They are also due to going all-in on agentic coding. It can feel painfully slow to go back to coding…

Your reply answers how you are able to spend money, not if it is returning sufficient dollar value per spend..

> I genuinely challenge someone spending $5-$10k a month to demonstrate how that turns into $50-$100k in value.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#104

Post by embedding-shape » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

jackdoe wrote: post #88

embedding-shape wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. Same but in regards to quotas. I'm on the 200 EUR ChatGPT plan, so presumable have the highest quota, using the "most expensive" models, on highest reasoning, in fast-mode (1.5x quota usage) and after a full day of almost exclusively doing programming with agents, I still get nowhere close to hitting my quota. In fact, since I started using…

I am running a bunch of autoresearch loops that optimize various compilers and its pretty easy to burn through as much money as you want if you have a measurable goal and good tests.

> have a measurable goal and good tests

I have both of those, yet seemingly I guess I'm not setting my goal in such a way that it supports "endless inference" like that. My goals have eventually ends, and that's when I move on. Optimization sure sounds like something you can throw away a good amount of tokens/quotas on, so yeah.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#105

Post by quaintdev » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

brokencode wrote: post #30

abuani wrote: post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

Really depends on the repo you’re working in. If it’s very large, especially if the tool needs to refer to documentation for a lot of custom frameworks and APIs, you often end up needing very large context windows that burn through tokens faster. If it’s smaller or sticks with common frameworks that the model was trained on, it’s able to do a lot more with smaller context windows and token usage is way lower.

Begs the question if we should move on to minimal microservices so that whole project lives in context of llm. I hardly have to do anything when I'm working with small project with llm.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#106

Post by gordonhart » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

abuani wrote: post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

On the OpenAI side, GPT-5.5 generates spend at a prolific rate that's even faster if you use it through an ACP connection in a tool like Zed. I used to never think about Codex rate limits and now I'm hitting mine every 5 hour block and spending ~$100/day on top of that in adhoc credit purchases.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#107

Post by bdangubic » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

abuani wrote: post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

> I use llms daily

this is your “problem” - you are missing the “nightly” part. on my box LLMs run 24/7 :)

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#108

Post by guywithahat » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

orf wrote: post #70

internetter wrote: post #6

I know I'm responding to AI right now, but > which means figuring out if the company can afford this level of productivity at scale. If it was actually productive, then the revenue would increase and affordability wouldn't be a question.

Not every change a developer makes increases revenue, and the changes that do often have a lag time.

This is my thought too. The eggheads in accounting set budgets, and we produce products within that budget. I could be twice as productive with twice as many people, and maybe 50% more productive with good AI, but if it's not budgeted for it's an issue (especially short-term before the product is released).

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#109

Post by embedding-shape » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

adi_kurian wrote: post #93

embedding-shape wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. Same but in regards to quotas. I'm on the 200 EUR ChatGPT plan, so presumable have the highest quota, using the "most expensive" models, on highest reasoning, in fast-mode (1.5x quota usage) and after a full day of almost exclusively doing programming with agents, I still get nowhere close to hitting my quota. In fact, since I started using…

Codex quota is suspiciously high right now. Either way, the subscription plans are not sustainable, and perhaps less relevant to any discussion about corporate API use. The prosumer developer plans are an insane deal. It is a golden age right now and it will end. If you tried to use the APIs to achieve the same thing, you would be spending thousands upon thousands of dollars a month. My completely unfounded conjectur…

> If you tried to use the APIs to achieve the same thing, you would be spending thousands upon thousands of dollars a month.

Yeah, obviously, not sure why anyone would be using APIs at this point, seems bananas to spend more than 10 EUR per day when these "almost-endless" subscriptions exists.

> My completely unfounded conjecture is that OpenAI is trying to grab developers back from Claude by burning $$$$.

Unlikely, since codex TUI was launched OpenAI pretty much had every developers pocket already as the agent is miles and leagues ahead of Claude Code, pretty much from inception. No other provider comes close to ChatGPT's Pro Mode either, I don't even think it's a quota/pricing thing, have the best models and people will flock by themselves.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#110

Post by bigbuppo » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

abuani wrote: post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

You're probably generating new code rather than analyzing old code for "improvement".