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DoorDash says AI agents have placed only 'several hundred' orders
DoorDash told analysts on its third-quarter earnings call that third-party AI agents such as Muse, Instinct and Fo have generated only "several hundred" orders in total, against roughly 3 million deliveries a day. CEO Tony Xu said customers still order through DoorDash's own app and that the company wants a healthy relationship with agent makers.
AI agents taking over commerce has been one of the louder narratives of the past year. DoorDash used its third-quarter earnings call to put a number on it, and the number is small: "several hundred" orders in total from third-party agents.
CEO Tony Xu, answering an analyst's question, named Muse, Instinct and Fo among the agents placing those orders. For comparison, DoorDash said in its 2025 report that it completes an average of roughly 3 million deliveries a day.
His framing was deliberately unsentimental. "You never want to fight gravity," Xu said of new technology, "but at the same time, you don't want to be delusional" — and the order count was his evidence for where things actually stand.
Xu added that users still overwhelmingly order through DoorDash's own app, but that the company wants to understand agentic use cases and build a healthy relationship with third-party agent makers. He also floated a future opportunity to advertise inside those agents.
DoorDash has been building in this direction itself. It launched a text-to-order agent in September, a command-line ordering tool in July, and the Ask DoorDash chatbot in June, which accepts prompts and photos. It has also published an MCP connector that lets other chatbots place orders, aimed at corporate accounts.
The wider landscape is split. Amazon has been blocking personal agents from its storefront, while Walmart has rolled out the welcome mat in an attempt to take business from rivals. DoorDash is positioning itself in between, keeping the door open without overstating demand.
The "several hundred" figure is a useful correction to the agentic-commerce story: the narrative has been running ahead of usage, and the default path to an order is still the native app. What to watch next is how platforms like DoorDash fold agents into their business model — through API partnerships, in-agent advertising, or both — and whether trust and checkout consistency improve enough for consumers to shift habits.
Why it matters
The number deflates the agentic-commerce narrative for delivery at least: agents are not yet a meaningful channel. For platforms the question shifts from whether to block agents to how to fold them into APIs and advertising.
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