DoorDash Finds AI Agents Still a Minimal Slice of Delivery Orders

CEO Tony Xu urged a balance between innovation and realism, warning against being delusional about the current state of agentic technology. He emphasized that the vast majority of consumer activity stays within DoorDash’s own native application. Despite the low current adoption, the company is actively testing its own AI tools, including text-to-order features, CLI agents, and visual-prompt chatbots, to better understand how automation fits into its ecosystem.

DoorDash is now positioning itself to cultivate relationships with outside developers, potentially opening doors for future advertising integrations. This strategy puts the company in a different camp than Amazon, which has actively blocked personal agents from accessing its site. Meanwhile, competitors like Walmart are aggressively courting these tools to capture market share, signaling that while current order volumes are thin, the battle for how customers interact with digital storefronts is only beginning.