The figures cited by DoorDash
During the presentation of its third-quarter results, DoorDash said it had so far received only “a few hundred” orders from third-party AI agents, including Muse, Instinct and Fo. The figure, reported by TechCrunch, should be read alongside the total volume reported by the company in its 2025 report: an average of about 3 million deliveries per day. The gap between the two figures is several orders of magnitude and suggests that the use of agents to buy food has not yet reached a significant scale for the platform.
The number was provided by CEO Tony Xu in response to questions from an analyst. Xu called the area “very dynamic” and explained his position with a metaphor: the company does not want to “fight gravity,” but neither does it want to be “delusional.” In practical terms, the company acknowledges the trend but urges that it be measured against actual data, which currently remain limited.
How Users Order and What DoorDash Is Doing
According to Xu, most users continue to order through the DoorDash app. The company has, however, developed its own tools to explore interaction through natural language: a text-to-order agent launched in September, a command-line agent introduced in July and the Ask DoorDash chatbot launched in June, which allows ordering via prompts and images. DoorDash has also released an MCP to enable ordering from other chatbots, designed in particular for business purchases.
On relations with external developers, the company said it is open to working with makers of third-party agents and interested in better understanding the use cases. Xu alluded to a possible future development: the possibility of advertising within these agents. However, this is a hypothesis, not a plan announced with timelines or methods.
An Industry Still Taking Shape
The DoorDash case fits into a broader picture in which platforms have not yet adopted a uniform stance toward AI agents. The source material cites two opposing examples: Amazon, which is blocking these personal agents, and Walmart, which has instead opened its doors to them to divert traffic from competitors. DoorDash’s choice appears intermediate: not closure, but prudent measurement and experimentation with its own tools.
Several elements remain to be verified. The source does not specify the time frame in which the “few hundred” orders were recorded, nor how many users actually use DoorDash’s proprietary agents. Nor is the monetary value of these orders relative to the total indicated. The figure, therefore, should be considered as a snapshot stated by the company in a financial setting, useful for tempering expectations about agent-run commerce, but not sufficient to outline an established trend.
