Personal AI agents aren't exactly taking over the ride-hailing world just yet. During its third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, the transportation company revealed that a mere four rides were booked through an AI agent during its single busiest week in October—the week of Halloween. Food ordering through Uber Eats via AI agents saw somewhat more activity, but the volume remained quite modest relative to overall trip numbers. CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy shared with Wall Street analysts that the company processed approximately 320 million trips and orders across Uber and Uber Eats during Halloween week, yet only 500 Uber Eats orders came through an AI agent. "It is very, very early and very limited traction that we are seeing so far," CEO Dara Khosrowshahi remarked about the small number of AI-placed orders, adding, "Listen, we hope that there will be more traction."

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These unexpectedly low figures for AI-initiated transactions emerge against a backdrop of mounting excitement around a new generation of AI agents capable of not just answering questions but executing tasks for users. The personal AI startup space has exploded, including one of the most talked-about players, Instinct, which launched last year and secured its latest funding round at a $10 billion valuation. Meta's Muse also claimed the top spot in Apple's U.S. App Store last month, surpassing 10 million users according to Meta's own figures, with the company noting many people were using it for shopping and conducting transactions with businesses. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and SpaceXAI (Grok) are all now offering their own AI agents, along with countless smaller startups. Nevertheless, early data from publicly traded companies suggests the agentic web has considerable ground to cover. DoorDash, for example, reported last week on its earnings call that it has received only a few hundred orders from AI agents to date, with the vast majority of customers still ordering through the DoorDash app. Uber appears to be experiencing the same pattern. Khosrowshahi highlighted that the typical time to book a ride is just 50 seconds within the company's app, and reordering a favorite meal takes only 90 seconds—implying an AI agent may not actually be saving users any time.

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Even with the low volume of AI-driven transactions, Khosrowshahi expressed optimism about agents more broadly. "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 stated. Currently, there are roughly eight major AI assistants available in the market, Khosrowshahi observed, and he anticipates that figure will eventually exceed 10. "Every single AI system company is talking to us," he concluded.