{"slug": "basically-no-one-is-using-ai-agents-for-their-doordash-orders", "title": "Basically no one is using AI agents for their DoorDash orders", "summary": "DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said on the company's third-quarter 2026 earnings call Thursday that AI agents are generating \"several hundred orders\" on the platform, a \"very low use case\" against the just under 1 billion orders DoorDash handled in Q3 2026 alone. Xu said agents may prove useful for \"long consideration purchases\" where they work proactively in the background, but that simple tasks like ordering food \"come directly to DoorDash.\" DoorDash launched its Model Context Protocol connector less than a month ago, currently limited to a small number of early beta partners and mainly used for corporate lunch orders.", "body_md": "As AI tools and agents have continued their march across all aspects of digital life, [many companies](https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/11/google-rolling-out-conversational-shopping-and-ads-in-ai-mode-search/) are [trying to use LLMs](https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/04/chatgpt-goes-shopping-with-new-product-browsing-feature/) to [improve the experience](https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/01/google-begins-rolling-out-chromes-auto-browse-ai-agent-today/) of [purchasing goods and services](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/ai-hype-invades-taco-bell-and-pizza-hut/) on the Internet. Thus far, though, a vanishingly small number of people seem to be taking advantage of those capabilities, at least when it comes to using the popular food delivery app DoorDash with an outside AI agent.\n\nIn [a third-quarter earnings call Thursday](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/29/doordash-dash-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/), DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu responded to an analyst question by noting that “AI agents are generating several hundred orders [on DoorDash] across the time that they’ve been up and running.” In a marked understatement, Xu called this a “very low use case” for a company that handled just shy of 1 billion orders total in the third quarter of 2026 alone.\n\nSpeaking generally, Xu said he sees the potential for AI agents to be genuinely helpful for “long consideration purchases” and major decisions where agents would be “doing work on your behalf proactively in the background.” However, Xu added, “when it comes to a task that’s as simple as ordering food, we tend to see that come directly to DoorDash.”\n\n## Give it time?\n\nTo be fair to the AI boosters, DoorDash only rolled out its Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector [less than a month ago](https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/doordash-ordering-connector). The connector provides a standardized, open-standard way for third-party AI tools to easily order through DoorDash’s platform. Without that kind of linkup—which is still only available to a small number of “early beta partners” and mainly used to streamline corporate lunch orders—AI agents have to go through a bit more effort to access DoorDash through a web interface, for instance.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/basically-no-one-is-using-ai-agents-for-their-doordash-orders", "canonical_source": "https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/doordash-says-outside-ai-agents-have-only-led-to-hundreds-of-orders-so-far/", "published_at": "2026-10-30 19:30:52+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-30 19:48:06.524998+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "agent-protocols", "ai-products"], "entities": ["DoorDash", "Tony Xu", "Model Context Protocol"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/basically-no-one-is-using-ai-agents-for-their-doordash-orders", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/basically-no-one-is-using-ai-agents-for-their-doordash-orders.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/basically-no-one-is-using-ai-agents-for-their-doordash-orders.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/basically-no-one-is-using-ai-agents-for-their-doordash-orders.jsonld"}}