After 3,300 job cuts, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has a promise for customers

JUST IN: Uber cuts around 3,300 jobs, nearly 10% of its global workforce, with CEO Dara Khosrowshahi saying the savings could fund cheaper ride prices for customers.

Uber just cut 3,300 jobs, nearly ten percent of its entire workforce.

And the message from CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, you can see him here, is aimed squarely at riders, not the people clearing their desks. He says the savings could fund cheaper ride prices for customers. So the pitch is, we let a tenth of the company go, and your trip to the airport might cost a bit less.

This is a company that spent years chasing profitability, and now that it's supposedly there, the knife comes out anyway. Three thousand three hundred people is not a trim, that's a restructuring, and framing it as a discount for the rest of us is a bold piece of salesmanship.

So watch the app, not the press release. If fares actually drop in the coming months, the promise was real. If they don't, 3,300 people paid for a headline.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.