Only four Uber rides were booked by an AI agent during the company’s busiest week in October. This figure came from Uber’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, which noted that the week of Halloween saw a surge in usage but still resulted in almost no automated bookings.
Automated orders for food via Uber Eats were higher, yet the volume remained small compared to the total number of trips.
Chief financial officer Balaji Krishnamurthy told Wall Street analysts that Uber and Uber Eats handled around 320 million trips and orders during that Halloween week. Only 500 of those food orders came from an AI agent.
“It is very, very early and very limited traction that we are seeing so far,” said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. “Listen, we hope that there will be more traction.”
These low numbers arrive as hype grows for a new wave of AI agents that handle tasks on users’ behalf rather than just answering questions. Personal AI startups have seen an explosion in activity. Instinct, founded last year, raised its most recent funding round at a $10 billion valuation. Meta’s Muse became the No. 1 app in Apple’s U.S. App Store last month, topping 10 million users, per Meta’s own reporting. The company said many users were using it to shop and transact with businesses.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and SpaceXAI (Grok) are also offering their own AI agents, as are numerous smaller startups.
Early numbers from public companies indicate the agentic web still has a long way to go. DoorDash said last week on its earnings call that it has only received a few hundred orders from AI agents so far, as most customers are still placing orders through the DoorDash app.
Uber is seeing the same behaviour. Khosrowshahi pointed out that the average time to book a ride is only 50 seconds in the company’s app, and re-ordering a favourite food only takes 90 seconds. That suggests an AI agent isn’t necessarily saving anyone time.
Despite the low number of AI-driven transactions, Khosrowshahi seemed bullish on the idea of 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.
Right now, there are around eight major AI assistants on the market. Khosrowshahi noted that he expects that number to grow to more than 10 in time.
“Every single AI system company is talking to us,” he added.
What it means
For people making things, the practical takeaway is that AI agents are not yet replacing manual booking. The average time to book a ride or re-order food is so short that automation offers no immediate benefit. Users still book rides and food through apps directly, meaning the workflow for creators and customers has not changed.
