Talk of AI agents handling shopping and food orders is growing, but DoorDash says third-party agents have so far played a small role in its business. On its third-quarter earnings call, the delivery company reported “several hundred” orders through agents such as Muse, Instinct, and Fo.
Third-party agent orders remain limited
The company’s 2025 report puts that figure in perspective: DoorDash completes an average of 3 million deliveries daily. The comparison suggests that orders arriving through outside AI agents currently make up a very small part of its delivery activity.
CEO Tony Xu described agent-based ordering as a fast-changing area. Responding to an analyst’s question, he said companies should recognize where the technology is going while also staying realistic about its current use.
Xu said customers still predominantly place orders through DoorDash’s app. That points to a gap between the attention AI agents receive and how most DoorDash customers are ordering today.
DoorDash is exploring agent-based ordering
Even with relatively few orders from third-party agents, DoorDash wants to learn how people might use them. Xu said the company is interested in developing a healthy relationship with agent makers, and suggested that advertising inside agents could become an opportunity in the future.
The company is also building tools of its own. Its offerings include a text-to-order agent launched in September, a CLI agent introduced in July, and Ask DoorDash, a chatbot launched in June that lets users place orders with prompts and photos.
DoorDash has also released an MCP for corporate ordering. The tool is intended to enable ordering from other chatbots, extending the company’s work beyond its own app and agents.
Access is still an open question
Agent-based ordering depends on more than whether customers want to use it. Websites are still deciding whether to let these agents access their content, so the ability of an agent to complete an order can also depend on the policies of the services it needs to interact with.
The article describes different approaches among retailers: Amazon has been blocking personal agents, while Walmart has welcomed them as a way to attract business from competitors. Those choices show that access remains contested as companies weigh how agents fit into online commerce.
For DoorDash, the current picture combines low reported volume from outside agents with active experimentation. The company says app ordering remains dominant, yet it is developing agent tools and keeping open the possibility of partnerships and advertising as the market evolves.
What the early figures suggest
The “several hundred” orders offer a snapshot of adoption, not a settled forecast for AI commerce. DoorDash’s daily delivery average and its comments about customer behavior show that third-party agent orders have not displaced its app as the main ordering channel.
At the same time, the company’s own products indicate that it sees potential in conversational and agent-led ordering. How much that changes customer habits will depend in part on how agents develop and whether online services allow them to reach the information and ordering functions they need.