Key facts
- Uber said AI agents placed four ride orders during the week of Halloween, its busiest week in October.
- Uber handled around 320 million trips and orders across Uber and Uber Eats during that week, per CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy.
- AI agents placed 500 Uber Eats orders during the same week, Uber said on its earnings call.
- CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said AI agent ordering shows very limited traction so far and Uber hopes there will be more.
- DoorDash said on its earnings call the previous week that it had received only a few hundred AI agent orders so far.
Uber said on its third-quarter earnings call on November 4 that AI agents placed only four ride orders during the week of Halloween, which the company described as its busiest week in October. Chief financial officer Balaji Krishnamurthy told analysts the company handled around 320 million trips and orders across Uber and Uber Eats during that week.
AI agents placed 500 Uber Eats orders during the same week, Uber said. Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the figures showed very limited traction so far. "It is very, very early and very limited traction that we are seeing so far," he said. "Listen, we hope that there will be more traction."
Khosrowshahi said the average time to book a ride in Uber's app is 50 seconds and re-ordering a favorite food takes 90 seconds. He said Uber views AI agents as another way to reach its platform and expects the number of major AI assistants, around eight on the market, to grow to more than 10 in time. "Every single AI system company is talking to us," he said.
DoorDash said on its earnings call the previous week that it had received only a few hundred orders from AI agents so far, with most customers still ordering through its app. The report also cited growing investment in personal AI agents, including startup Instinct, which it said was founded last year and raised its most recent funding round at a $10 billion valuation, and Meta's Muse app, which it said topped 10 million users.