Source : TechCrunch (AI-generated image)
SAN FRANCISCO, November 4, 2026 – Uber says very few people are using personal artificial intelligence (AI) agents to book its services, with only four rides ordered through an AI agent during the week of Halloween, its busiest week in October, as reported by TechCrunch and The Verge.
The figures were shared on the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. Uber’s chief financial officer, Balaji Krishnamurthy, told analysts that the company handled around 320 million trips and orders across Uber and Uber Eats during the week of Halloween, of which only about 500 Uber Eats orders were placed by an AI agent.
The Verge reported that this is the first time Uber has disclosed how many rides and deliveries have been arranged on its platform by third-party AI agents. The Verge described the four rides as the total for the third quarter, while TechCrunch reported the figure for the week of Halloween.
“Very, very early”
“It is very, very early and very limited traction that we are seeing so far,” said chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi. “Listen, we hope that there will be more traction.”
He said Uber wanted its services to be available to consumers in an easy way and that it would work with third-party AI companies, while expressing confidence that customers would continue to prefer using the Uber app directly. “We want to make sure we are not dependent on any one player, and I think we are very well positioned in this environment going forward,” he said, as quoted by The Verge.
Khosrowshahi pointed out that booking a ride in Uber’s app takes about 50 seconds on average, while reordering a favourite meal takes around 90 seconds, suggesting that an AI agent does not necessarily save users much time.
Fears of being cut out
The numbers come amid growing interest in AI agents that can carry out tasks on a user’s behalf rather than simply answering questions. Some experts have warned that platforms such as Uber and DoorDash risk “disintermediation”, in which customers ask an AI agent to order food or book a ride instead of opening the company’s own app.
TechCrunch noted that Meta’s Muse became the top app in Apple’s US App Store last month and has passed 10 million users, according to Meta, while OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and SpaceXAI also offer their own agents. DoorDash said on its own earnings call last week that it had received only a few hundred orders from AI agents so far.
Despite the low numbers, Khosrowshahi remained positive about 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. He noted that there are around eight major AI assistants on the market and said he expects that number to grow to more than 10.
Uber is also building its own AI tools to keep customers on its platform. Earlier this year, it introduced a Cart Assistant for Uber Eats that builds a grocery list from a photo of a recipe or a text prompt, The Verge reported.
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