Three Uber executives, three different seats, told the same story this spring. The cost category most boards govern quarterly is moving to hourly.
By April, Uber’s CTO had blown the AI budget he set in December. Three weeks later, the CEO said he was metering headcount and leaning further in. Two weeks after that, the COO asked aloud whether any of it was producing value. Three quotes, three seats, one cost category nobody had experience with. Here is why token spend breaks the quarterly cadence finance was built on, and the three questions a board should be asking by the next meeting.
