Key facts
- Uber CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy said AI agents were the source of four ride-hailing trips during the last week of October.
- Krishnamurthy said about 500 Uber Eats orders in that week came from AI agents.
- Uber completed 320 million ride-hailing and delivery trips during the last week of October, Krishnamurthy said.
- DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said the company had received several hundred orders in total from AI agents.
- Krishnamurthy said AI-agent ordering has seen very limited traction so far.
- DoorDash said in September it was testing a text-to-order feature that bypasses its app.
Uber and DoorDash each reported that AI agents account for only a small fraction of their orders, according to remarks on their latest earnings calls. Uber CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy said on the company's third-quarter earnings call on November 4 that AI agents were the source of four ride-hailing trips and about 500 Uber Eats orders during the last week of October. That week was one of Uber's largest, with 320 million ride-hailing and delivery trips, he said.
"It is very, very early, and very limited traction that we have seen so far," Krishnamurthy said. The comments came about a week after DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said his company had received "several hundred orders in total" from AI agents.
Both companies are still developing AI tools for their own apps. DoorDash said in September that it was testing a text-to-order feature that allows users to bypass the company's app. Some AI users have put agents in charge of buying items from plane tickets to groceries, while ordering errors and concerns about agents misusing credit card details have led others to use them more cautiously, Business Insider previously reported.