Uber's CTO launches internal AI squads to overhaul corporate workflows

Uber's chief technology officer, Praveen Neppalli Naga, says the firm is embedding its top AI engineers in internal departments to map real work and build rapid-deployment tools.

After provoking a budget-related controversy earlier this year, Uber's chief technology officer, Praveen Neppalli Naga, introduced a new internal AI initiative. The company now sends its most skilled AI engineers into various business units for two-week stints, calling these groups "Agentic Pods." During the first days, engineers observe employees, documenting every action in a workflow before quickly developing and testing AI-driven software.

Early pilots have slashed a 15-hour financial planning process to half an hour and cut two-day report generation to ten minutes, while marketing approvals fell from two weeks to less than an hour. Naga emphasized that the biggest efficiencies arise from re-architecting whole procedures, eliminating redundant approvals, and replacing legacy tools. Some tech leaders liken the model to a "rearward deployed engineer," embedding talent inside the company rather than sending them to customers. The experiment aims to uncover the next wave of productivity gains across Uber's operations.