During Uber’s third-quarter earnings call, the company said that personal AI agents have so far accounted for a very small number of orders on its platforms. In fact, during the week of Halloween — the company’s busiest week in October — only four rides were booked through AI agents.
Uber Chief Financial Officer Balaji Krishnamurthy told analysts on the call that Uber and Uber Eats handled about 320 million trips and orders during the Halloween week. Of those, roughly 500 Uber Eats orders were placed via AI agents.
“It is very, very early and very limited traction that we are seeing so far,” said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on the call, commenting on the low level of AI-initiated transactions. “Listen, we hope that there will be more traction.”
These unexpectedly small figures come amid significant hype around a new generation of AI agents that do more than answer questions — they act on users’ behalf. A wave of personal AI startups has emerged recently, including Instinct, founded last year, which in its most recent funding round reached a $10 billion valuation.
Meta’s Muse app also saw rapid adoption: according to Meta, it became the No. 1 app in Apple’s U.S. App Store last month and surpassed 10 million users. Meta reported many people were using Muse to shop and transact with businesses.
Major AI providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and SpaceXAI (Grok) are also offering agent-style products, alongside numerous smaller startups. Still, early data from public companies suggest the agentic web is not yet widely adopted: DoorDash said on its earnings call last week that it has only received a few hundred orders from AI agents so far, with most customers still ordering through the DoorDash app.
Uber appears to be seeing the same pattern. Khosrowshahi noted that the average time to book a ride within Uber’s app is only 50 seconds, and re-ordering a favorite meal takes about 90 seconds — implying that an AI agent may not yet save users meaningful time.
Despite the current low volume of AI-driven transactions, Khosrowshahi expressed optimism about agents in general. “We think that is another opportunity to reach our platform. We think it will be a net positive in terms of demand on the ecosystem,” he said.
He added that there are roughly eight major AI assistants on the market today, a number he expects will rise above ten. “Every single AI system company is talking to us,” he said.
Why this matters
The reported figures underscore that AI agents’ adoption for routine commerce — rides and food delivery — is still in an early phase, even as investment and product launches accelerate. For major platforms such as Uber and DoorDash, the fact that AI-initiated transactions remain marginal provides important context about how quickly user behavior may shift toward agent-driven interactions.
(The article is based on comments made during Uber’s third-quarter earnings call and statements by company executives.)
