Uber AI Agents Booked Just 4 Rides in Its Busiest Week

Four rides. That is how many trips AI agents booked on Uber during a week when the company handled around 320 million trips and orders, according to executives on Uber's third quarter earnings call on Wednesday. For anyone tracking how quickly Uber AI agents and other chatbot assistants are changing everyday apps, that figure is a useful reality check.

The numbers came from chief financial officer Balaji Krishnamurthy and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi when analysts asked about agent traffic. Uber posts its earnings materials on its investor relations site, and a full call transcript is available from The Motley Fool. TechCrunch, which first highlighted the remarks, reported that the week in question was Uber's busiest of the quarter, around Halloween.

The Uber AI agents tally in seven numbers

• 4: rides on Uber that were booked and completed through an AI agent that week.
• About 500: Uber Eats orders placed by agents over the same stretch.
• About 320 million: total trips and orders across Uber and Uber Eats that week, per Krishnamurthy.
• 50 seconds: the average time Khosrowshahi gave for booking a ride directly in the Uber app.
• 90 seconds: roughly how long it takes to reorder a favorite meal on Uber Eats, by his count.
• 8: major AI assistants Uber sees in the market today, a number Khosrowshahi expects to pass 10.
• 215 million: monthly active platform consumers Uber reported for the quarter, up 14%.

Four out of 320 million barely registers

Put the two biggest numbers side by side and the agent share almost disappears. Even counting the 500 food orders, agents accounted for roughly one or two of every million trips and orders that week.

Khosrowshahi did not dress it up. TechCrunch quoted him describing the traction as very early and very limited. He also said Uber hopes usage grows, and that he sees agents as one more door into the platform, one he expects to add demand rather than take it away.

Why 50 seconds is hard for a chatbot to beat

The speed figures may explain the gap better than anything else. A ride takes under a minute to book in the app, and a reorder takes about a minute and a half. An agent has to beat that while a person types or speaks a request, confirms the pickup spot and approves a charge. For a task most people already do on autopilot, there is little time left to save.

That fits what we saw when AI agents were handed wallets with spending caps: the hard part is trust and control around money, not the conversation. Apple is trying to smooth the handoff by letting apps plug their own actions into Siri, and OpenAI is pulling chat and task work into a single ChatGPT screen. None of that has moved Uber's ride numbers yet.

Eight assistants knocking on Uber's door

Low usage has not cooled interest from AI companies. Khosrowshahi said every AI system company is talking to Uber, and he counted about eight major assistants today. For Uber, being bookable inside each of them is cheap insurance in case one of them takes off.

Uber is not alone in seeing a trickle. TechCrunch reported last week that DoorDash had received only a few hundred orders from AI agents. Two of the biggest delivery and mobility apps in the US are telling the same story.

The quarter around the agent numbers

The agent figures were a footnote in a large quarter. According to the transcript, Uber reported:

• Gross bookings of $59.8 billion, up 20% from a year earlier.
• Revenue of $14.8 billion, up 10%.
• 4.1 billion trips, up 16%.
• About 55 million Uber One members.
• Fourth quarter gross bookings guidance of $63.25 billion to $65.25 billion.

Khosrowshahi also said Uber expects about 700 driverless vehicles on its network by the end of this year and more than 2,000 by the end of 2027. Autonomous rides, not chatbots, got far more airtime as the next big shift in how people get around.

Agents are clearly catching on in some places. On GitHub, agents now start 40% of pull requests, and you can follow more of that shift in our AI coverage. Hailing a car is not one of those places yet. Next quarter's call will show whether four rides becomes forty.