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Uber Technologies is set to eliminate approximately 3,300 jobs worldwide, representing about 10% of its workforce, in one of the company’s largest restructuring exercises since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ride-hailing giant said the overhaul is designed to simplify its organisational structure, reduce management layers and speed up decision-making as it redirects resources towards growth, innovation and emerging areas such as autonomous vehicles.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the changes in a message to employees on Wednesday, saying the company had become more complex as it expanded rapidly over the past several years.
According to the company, a leaner structure will give teams clearer responsibilities while reducing the amount of time spent coordinating across multiple layers of management.
Management Layers Targeted
The restructuring goes beyond simply reducing headcount.
Uber plans to cut the number of employees positioned seven or more reporting layers below the chief executive by 20%. It will also reduce by nearly half the number of teams with only one or two direct reports.
Some teams will be merged, while the company plans to concentrate more employees around major operational hubs.
Uber is also tightening its approach to remote work. Fully remote positions are expected to account for only about 1% of the workforce, while the company will retain its policy requiring most employees to work from an office at least three days a week.
The company said employees whose positions are affected have been notified, although some countries may have longer notification periods because of local employment regulations.
Autonomous Vehicles Drive Strategic Shift
The workforce reduction comes as Uber prepares for a transportation market increasingly influenced by autonomous driving technology.
Uber has committed more than $10 billion towards autonomous-vehicle technology and partnerships as robotaxi operators such as Waymo and Tesla intensify competition in the mobility market.
The company has also developed partnerships with autonomous-vehicle companies including Avride, Lucid, Nuro and Rivian, while working with Pony AI on plans to deploy robotaxis in Europe.
Khosrowshahi has not characterised the latest company-wide layoffs as an AI-driven workforce reduction. Instead, he has presented the restructuring as an effort to make Uber more efficient and better positioned to invest in technologies that could reshape its core transportation business.
The shift nevertheless reflects the changing requirements of a business that could increasingly combine conventional ride-hailing with autonomous vehicles.
Uber Expands Delivery Business
While mobility technology remains central to Uber’s strategy, the company is also reshaping its delivery operations.
Uber recently agreed to acquire Delivery Hero’s foodpanda business in selected markets in a deal valued at approximately $14.8 billion, expanding its presence in the global delivery market.
The company is bringing restaurant, retail and direct-delivery operations under a more unified structure as part of the broader organisational overhaul.
Engineering and science teams are also being consolidated, with the objective of reducing duplication and creating a simpler corporate structure.
The changes come despite Uber’s continued expansion. The company’s revenue has nearly tripled over the past five years, illustrating the rapid growth that has also contributed to the complexity management now wants to address.
Largest Job Cuts Since 2020
The 3,300 planned reductions represent Uber’s biggest workforce cut since May 2020, when the company eliminated approximately 6,700 positions as the COVID-19 pandemic caused demand for ride-hailing services to collapse.
Uber had approximately 34,000 employees globally at the end of 2025, according to its annual report.
The latest exercise follows other workforce changes this year, including reductions in its People and Places division and cuts affecting customer-service operations.
Those earlier changes came as Uber sought to simplify its operations while increasing its use of artificial intelligence across different parts of the business.
AI Spending Adds to Cost Pressure
Uber’s restructuring also comes amid a wider technology-industry push to control costs while investing heavily in artificial intelligence.
Reports indicate that Uber’s employees exhausted the company’s entire 2026 AI budget within four months, underscoring the speed at which the company is deploying the technology.
However, the latest job cuts have not been directly attributed to AI by Khosrowshahi.
Instead, Uber says the immediate objective is to remove organisational complexity and generate savings that can be redirected into growth and innovation.
The strategy reflects a broader trend among technology companies, where businesses are attempting to balance large investments in AI and emerging technologies against the cost of maintaining increasingly large corporate structures.
Drivers and Couriers Not Affected
The restructuring concerns Uber’s corporate workforce rather than the millions of drivers and couriers who operate on its platform as independent contractors.
For Uber, the changes represent an attempt to prepare the company for a new phase of growth while maintaining its existing mobility and delivery businesses.
The immediate challenge will be ensuring that a smaller workforce can support the company’s expanding operations without compromising execution.
As competition in ride-hailing, delivery, artificial intelligence and autonomous transportation intensifies, Uber is betting that a flatter organisation will allow it to make decisions faster and direct more capital towards the technologies it believes will shape its next stage of growth.
