Despite growing concerns over AI disintermediation, Uber executives revealed that third-party bots accounted for just four rides and 500 food deliveries out of 320 million transactions.
Despite growing concerns over AI disintermediation, Uber executives revealed that third-party bots accounted for just four rides and 500 food deliveries out of 320 million transactions.
AI agents won’t be stealing Uber’s lunch any time soon.
Only four rides were arranged by third-party AI agents during the third quarter of 2026, Uber executives disclosed during an earnings call this morning. The volume of Uber Eats orders fulfilled by AI agents was a little higher, with the company recording “around 500” during the week of Halloween, out of a total 320 million Uber rides and Uber Eats deliveries.
This is the first time that Uber has disclosed the number of third-party AI agents that have arranged deliveries or rides on its platform. With the rise of AI agents like Meta’s Muse or OpenAI’s Dots, some experts are predicting that platforms like Uber and DoorDash are at risk of disintermediation, in which customers use AI agents to order food or book a ride, rather than visiting the app itself.
But in these early days, it seems like the risk is still very small. During the call, Uber’s executives expressed an openness to working with third-party AI companies to make things easier for agents to use their platform — while also expressing confidence that their customers will continue to prefer the experience of using the Uber app directly.
“We hope that there will be more traction,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said during the call. “We do think that we want to make services that are available to consumers in a delightful, easy way. We think our direct services are going to be the most delightful and easy, but we will work with these third parties.”
He continued, “It is just very, very early, and 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.”
As we’ve noted before , this first wave of AI agents still have a long way to go before people begin seeing them as a viable way to order food or book a ride somewhere. There still is a lot of friction points. And platform operators like Uber or DoorDash have little incentive to allow these agents to barge in and replace their own customers.
Which is not to say the AI companies won’t inevitably figure it out! These companies know this is one of their primary use cases, and their best path to a more profitable future. But getting Uber to agree to more disintermediation will be a tough ask.
Uber is developing its own AI tools that are designed to keep customers using its own platform. Earlier this year, the company rolled out a new Cart Assistant for Uber Eats , in which an AI bot will build a grocery list based on an image of a recipe or a text prompt.
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