Uber: only four rides ordered by AI agents during its busiest week in October

Very few people are using personal AI agents to order an Uber. On the company's third-quarter earnings call, held on a Wednesday, Uber said that only four rides were requested through an AI agent during its busiest week in October: Halloween week. The information comes from a TechCrunch article by Sarah Perez, republished on Yahoo Tech.

On Uber Eats, the food delivery service, agent usage was somewhat higher, but the volume remains small relative to the total. Chief financial officer Balaji Krishnamurthy told Wall Street analysts that the company handled about 320 million rides and orders across Uber and Uber Eats that week, and that only 500 Uber Eats orders were placed by an AI agent.

CEO Dara Khosrowshahi described the situation this way: “It's very, very early and we're seeing very limited traction so far.” He added that they expect more traction in the future.

These figures contrast with the current enthusiasm for a new wave of AI agents that don't just answer questions but carry out tasks on the user's behalf. According to the article, there has been an explosion of personal AI startups. Among them is Instinct, founded last year, which according to the text closed its latest round at a $10 billion valuation. Also mentioned is Meta's Muse, which was the No. 1 app on Apple's U.S. App Store last month and surpassed 10 million users, according to Meta's own data; the company said many people were using it to shop and transact with businesses. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and SpaceXAI (Grok) also already offer their own agents, as do numerous smaller startups.

Even so, early data from public companies suggests the agentic web still has a long way to go. DoorDash, for example, said on its own earnings call the previous week that it had received only a few hundred orders from AI agents, as most customers still order from its app.

Khosrowshahi offered a possible explanation: in the Uber app, the average time to book a ride is just 50 seconds, and reordering a favorite meal takes 90 seconds. That suggests an AI agent doesn't necessarily save anyone time.

Despite the meager numbers, the executive was optimistic about agents in general. He sees them as “another opportunity to reach our platform” and believes they will be “a net positive in terms of demand for the ecosystem.” He said there are currently about eight major AI assistants on the market and expects the number to exceed ten over time. He added that “every AI systems company is talking to us.”

In short, the most striking figure — four rides and 500 food orders against some 320 million weekly transactions — shows that, for now, agent-driven commerce is almost negligible for the big service platforms, although they don't rule out it becoming a meaningful channel.