It appears that the utilization of personal AI agents for ordering Ubers is quite limited. During the third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, the transportation giant revealed that merely four rides were arranged through an AI agent during its peak week in October, coinciding with Halloween. Although there was a slightly higher usage of AI agents for food orders via Uber Eats, the figures remained modest when compared to the total number of trips. Balaji Krishnamurthy, Uber’s chief financial officer, informed Wall Street analysts that the company managed approximately 320 million trips and orders across both Uber and Uber Eats during Halloween week, yet only 500 Uber Eats orders were made through an AI agent.
“It is very, very early and very limited traction that we are seeing so far,” stated CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, commenting on the minimal number of orders generated by AI agents. “Listen, we hope that there will be more traction.” The unexpectedly low figures for AI-initiated transactions emerge amidst increasing excitement surrounding a new generation of AI agents capable of not only answering queries but also performing tasks for users. The market has witnessed a surge in personal AI startups, including the highly publicized Instinct, which was established last year and recently secured funding at a valuation of $10 billion. Additionally, Meta’s Muse topped the charts as the number one app in Apple’s U.S. App Store last month, surpassing 10 million users, according to Meta’s own reports. The company indicated that many users were leveraging the app for shopping and business transactions.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and SpaceXAI (Grok) have also introduced their own AI agents, alongside numerous smaller startups. Nevertheless, initial data from publicly traded companies suggest that the agentic web has considerable room for growth. For example, DoorDash reported last week during its earnings call that it had only processed a few hundred orders from AI agents thus far, with the majority of customers still opting to place orders through the DoorDash app. Uber appears to be experiencing similar trends. Khosrowshahi noted that the average time to book a ride is just 50 seconds in the company’s app, while re-ordering a favorite meal takes only 90 seconds, indicating that an AI agent may not significantly reduce time for users.
Despite the low volume of AI-driven transactions, Khosrowshahi expressed optimism regarding the potential of AI agents. “We think that is another opportunity to reach our platform. We believe it will positively impact demand within the ecosystem,” he remarked. Currently, Khosrowshahi mentioned that there are approximately eight major AI assistants available in the market, and he anticipates that this number will exceed ten in the future. “Every single AI system company is talking to us,” he added.
