Two important news for Uber for today. First, its chief technology officer Praveen Neppalli Naga has declared the tokenmaxxing stage for Uber coming to an end, and second, robotaxis in Los Angeles and San Francisco this year. Woo-hooo! Even though they steal human drivers’ work. Here’s the scoop.
Goodbye, tokenmaxxing
Most of the time, if it’s from a CTO, there is no need for a confirmation from the higher-ups, such as the CEO, before the CTO’s statements become the official. As for Uber CTO Naga, Uber has come to the end of its tokenmaxxing self.
On a post on Twitter, or X, Naga stated that the company is seeing some “very interesting trends on AI costs,” and that this was “another signal that” the world is coming to “the end of the so-called ‘tokenmaxxing’.”
This tokenmaxxing thing isn’t something born out of online casinos, if you haven’t heard, which is, by the way, weird, since this is coming to its end, tokenmaxxing is the workplace practice of maximizing AI token consumption and treating this high volume as a proxy for individual or team productivity.
This term combines “token,” which is also the basic unit of AI models process with “-maxxing,” the Internet slang for maximizing a metric.
Other definitions explaining tokenmaxxing state that it is an enterprise AI trend that, at the very least, emerged only in the first half of 2026, in which companies encourage their employees to adopt AI as much as possible in their workflows. As a result, there are companies that made AI usage a performance metric that staff would be evaluated on.
Robotaxis in Los Angeles, San Francisco
This week isn’t only a week of drones, but also a week of robotaxis, of course. As Uber laid out its plans to operate robotaxis in 28 cities internationally by 2028, Olympics year, its CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will be launching robotaxis in four cities in the USA by this year, Los Angeles and San Francisco included.
Uber is currently communicating with governors, mayors, council members, and others who have raised their concerns about possible job loss, safety, and congestion.
Here’s the statement from Khosrowshahi: “We can’t have AVs blocking the streets of the District of Columbia when there’s a presidential or vice presidential motorcade going through. These are real issues.”
This year, Uber is to launch autonomous ridesharing cars in the San Francisco Bay Area using Lucid cars. Lucid and another famous autonomous driving technology developer started testing their six-passenger car in the Bay Area. The California Public Utilities Commission has already issued a permit allowing these companies to start testing autonomous cars.
Later this year, robotaxis will ply Los Angeles as Uber partners for robotaxi services with Motional in Las Vegas, Waymo in Atlanta and Austin, Texas, and Avride in Dallas. The ridesharing company plans to partner with Zoox robotaxis in Las Vegas this year.
So, things are really getting exciting, especially that Los Angeles and San Francisco are among the hottest destinations on the planet. Did you know that Uber has also pledged $10 billion for the robotaxi race? Share your thoughts on this story by creating that account on RSF today!