Uber Technologies Inc. cut 10% of jobs in its Community Operations customer service team on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, citing a need to simplify operations and scale artificial intelligence deployment [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].
The company told affected employees working remotely to relocate to hub offices in compliance with its return-to-office policy [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Uber said these changes aim to strengthen in-person collaboration alongside AI adoption [5].
Megha Yethatika, Uber's vice president of global community operations, said the organization had become "too complex and siloed," adding, "We cannot scale frontier technology on top of fragmented processes" [2]. She noted AI represents "a massive opportunity" to accelerate output and improve customer solutions, but the organizational structure must become more effective to unlock this potential [5].
This round marks Uber's second workforce reduction in under two months, following a June 2026 cut of 23% in its people division. That earlier reduction affected less than 1% of Uber's estimated 34,000 global employees and was not specifically tied to AI [2, 3, 4, 5].
Despite slowing hiring due to the increased use of AI, Uber continues to recruit for more than 500 open roles, including engineering positions supporting its robotaxi partnerships [2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. The company spokesperson said, "We are making structural changes to simplify operations, strengthen in-person collaboration, and continue to embrace AI" [5].
Other tech companies such as Block, Oracle, IBM, Snap, and Meta have also recently cited AI adoption when announcing layoffs [2, 4, 5, 6].
In May 2026, Uber first announced its plan to slow hiring because of expanding internal AI use, ahead of these job cuts [2, 3, 4, 5, 6].
Uber's next steps will likely focus on integrating AI more deeply into customer operations while maintaining a smaller, more centralized team to manage these advances [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].
