Apparently, very few people are using personal AI agents to order Ubers. On Wednesday’s third-quarter earnings call, the company announced that only four rides were ordered through its AI agents during the week of Halloween, its busiest week in October.
Although more people were using AI agents to order food through the delivery service Uber Eats, the volume was still quite small compared to the overall number of rides.
Uber Chief Financial Officer Balaji Krishnamurthy told Wall Street analysts on a conference call that during the week of Halloween, the company processed about 320 million rides and orders across Uber and Uber Eats, but only 500 Uber Eats orders were placed by AI agents.
“So far, we’re at a very early stage and we’re seeing very limited traction,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said, referring to the low number of orders placed by AI agents. “Listen, I hope we get more traction.”
The shockingly low number of transactions initiated by AI comes amid growing hype for a new wave of AI agents that not only answer questions but handle tasks on behalf of users. Personal AI startups are exploding, including one of the hottest: Instinct. Instinct was founded last year and raised its latest funding round at a valuation of $10 billion. Meta’s Muse became the No. 1 app on Apple’s U.S. App Store last month, with more than 10 million users, according to Meta’s own report. According to the company, many people use it to shop and transact with businesses.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and SpaceXAI (Grok) are also currently offering their own AI agents, as are a number of smaller startups.
Still, early numbers from the public company show Agent Web still has a long way to go. For example, DoorDash said on its earnings call last week that it has only received a few hundred orders so far from its AI agents because most of its customers still order through the DoorDash app.
Uber appears to be making a similar move. Khosrowshahi noted that the average time it takes to book a ride on the company’s app is just 50 seconds, and reordering your favorite food takes just 90 seconds. This suggests that AI agents aren’t necessarily saving anyone time.
Despite the small number of AI-driven trades, Khosrowshahi seemed bullish on the idea of agents in general. “We see this as another opportunity to reach our platform. We think it 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 Khosrowshahi says that number will grow to more than 10 over time.
“All the AI systems companies are talking to us,” he added.
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