Uber will lay off about 3,300 employees, roughly 10% of its global workforce, in its biggest cuts since the pandemic. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told staff the restructuring will flatten management by 20% and shrink the number of single- and two-person teams by about half, bringing headcount below 30,000, near 2021 levels.
Khosrowshahi said growth in recent years "created more layers, more co-ordination, more fragmented ownership" than the business now needs. The company is also consolidating its restaurant, retail and white-label delivery operations into one team, and will limit remote work to roughly 1% of employees going forward.
The savings are meant to fund driver and courier programs and Uber's autonomous vehicle ambitions, as the company has pledged more than $10 billion to robotaxi partnerships. Rivals like Waymo are expanding without routing rides through Uber's app, and Tesla is pushing its own robotaxi service, raising pressure on Uber's role as the middleman between vehicles and riders. Uber shares rose as much as 1.7% in premarket trading after the announcement.