Uber’s AI agents see minimal Halloween use

During the week of Halloween, Uber Technologies reported roughly 320 million combined trips and food delivery orders across its platform, but only a tiny fraction came through autonomous AI agents. Executives said AI agents generated 504 total Uber rides and Uber Eats orders over that period, underscoring the limited role this technology currently plays in the company’s operations.

Chief Financial Officer Balaji Krishnamurthy detailed that around 500 of these AI-driven transactions were Uber Eats orders, while just four were rides. The figures highlight how marginal AI-intermediated activity is compared with the overall scale of Uber’s weekly usage.

On Uber’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call, Krishnamurthy described the AI agent volumes as very early with very limited traction so far. Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi echoed that assessment, saying the company hopes adoption will increase but emphasizing that current contribution from third-party agents is negligible.

Khosrowshahi noted that booking a ride through Uber’s standard app takes a mean time of about 50 seconds, while reordering a favorite meal on Uber Eats has a median time of roughly 90 seconds. These figures suggest that existing user experiences already involve relatively low friction, constraining the immediate time-saving benefits that AI agents can offer for these specific tasks.

Even with today’s low volumes, Uber is engaging with external AI providers. Khosrowshahi said the company is negotiating terms of trade with outside AI assistants and intends to work with third parties while avoiding dependence on any single player. He referenced past experience in online travel, where reliance on large platforms influenced customer acquisition dynamics.

Khosrowshahi also observed that there are roughly eight major AI assistants in the market, a number he expects to exceed 10 as adoption matures. Uber’s stance is to keep its own direct services central to the user experience while positioning itself to benefit from growth in the broader AI assistant ecosystem.

The limited traction from AI agents comes against a backdrop of solid overall business growth for Uber. For the third quarter, the company reported gross bookings of $59.8 billion, a year-over-year increase of 20%. Revenue for the quarter reached $14.8 billion, up 10% compared with the same period a year earlier.

Elsewhere in the food delivery and mobility sector, DoorDash (DASH) has reported similarly modest AI-driven activity. Its leadership said that third-party AI agents have generated only several hundred orders cumulatively, reinforcing the picture of early-stage, small-scale adoption of agentic AI across major consumer logistics platforms.