Uber сократил 10% рабочих мест в клиентской поддержке, сославшись на внедрение ИИ

What exactly Uber did

Uber laid off 10% of its customer support staff and kept the rest of the team working alongside automated tools. The company framed this not as a one-off cost-cutting move but as a structural change — an attempt to "streamline its ranks" and more actively deploy AI in serving riders and drivers.

• Date of the announcement — July 22, 2026
• Scale — 10% of jobs in customer support
• Affected specifically the customer service division, not the whole company
• Official reason — simplifying the structure and adopting artificial intelligence
• Data source — a Bloomberg Tech report

Why is support the target?

Uber cut customer support first and foremost because its tasks are the easiest to hand off to AI: routine inquiries — trip status, refunds, billing disputes — are well suited to handling by chatbots and LLM agents. The company expects automated systems to take over part of the work previously done by people.

"Part of an effort to simplify its structure and adopt artificial intelligence,"

Uber's statement says, as quoted by Bloomberg.

According to Bloomberg, this specifically concerns 10% of roles within customer service operations — a significant but not total share of the team.

What Uber did not disclose

Uber did not name either the absolute number of people laid off or which AI systems will specifically replace people and for which types of inquiries. The company limited itself to the wording about 10% and "adopting artificial intelligence," without providing quality metrics for the automated support or a timeline for the full transition. This leaves open the main question: will bots be able to handle non-standard complaints — accidents, safety disputes, account lockouts — where the cost of a mistake is high and a template response doesn't work.

A trend, not a one-off case

Cutting support under the banner of AI fits into the broader wave of 2026: tech companies increasingly explain layoffs by automation rather than a business downturn. Customer service has found itself at the forefront because AI tools already deliver measurable results on routine scenarios there — and Uber, by announcing the 10% figure, publicly cements this shift.

For support employees themselves, the essence of the job is changing: from "answering inquiries" to "monitoring and further training the systems that answer in their place." Some roles are disappearing, others are being transformed into AI oversight.

What this means

Uber's announcement on July 22, 2026 is one more marker that AI is moving from experiments into real personnel decisions at major companies. Even without absolute figures, the formula "cut 10% and we're adopting AI" sets the tone for the whole industry: customer support is becoming one of the first mass functions that platforms are openly shifting onto automation.