Key Takeaways
- Uber’s management said on its third-quarter call that AI agents sent it around 500 Uber Eats orders and 4 rides, against about 320 million trips in Halloween week.
- CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he doesn’t want Uber dependent on an outside gatekeeper again, and MercadoLibre and JPMorgan are keeping outside agents away from their inventory and accounts too.
- Members drive more than half of Uber’s bookings, and free cash flow reached $9.8 billion in 2025, so Uber can set its own terms with the assistants that want its business.
- Uber trades at about 17x forward earnings, its lowest in three years, though AI agents have barely touched its business so far.
Uber Technologies (UBER) just put a number on the AI agent threat to its business. It’s 4.
On Uber’s third-quarter call on Wednesday, CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy said Halloween week was one of Uber’s biggest, with about 320 million trips across rides and Uber Eats. Agents brought in “around 500 orders total” for Uber Eats.
And for rides, “it was a grand total of 4 trips that we fulfilled from agents.”
DoorDash’s numbers were just as thin: AI agents placed only several hundred of its 993 million orders.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi ran Expedia before he joined Uber, and he explained on the call why Uber wants customers coming straight to its app: “I used to work in the travel business where we were dependent on the Googles of the world. I don’t want to go back there.”
MercadoLibre (MELI) went further on its own call the same day. CEO Ariel Szarfsztejn said the company has “decided not to provide our inventory to any external platform.” And Steve Eisman, the investor made famous by The Big Short, said on Monday’s episode of The Real Eisman Playbook that JPMorgan Chase (JPM) “made an announcement that said we are not going to let any agentic AI, outside agentic AI, into our bank.”
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Uber owns the front door
Uber can talk this way because its customers already come straight to it. Khosrowshahi said members now account for more than half of bookings. The median ride takes 50 seconds to book, and 75% of rides take a single tap.
Uber is also building its own assistants. Baskets built with its new Cart Assistant are “roughly twice the average,” he said.
Analysts expect that direct business to keep growing, with revenue rising from $52.0 billion in 2025 to $76.4 billion in 2028:
With agents booking 4 rides, nothing on this call gives analysts a reason to cut those estimates over agent risk.
The business also brings in a lot of cash. Free cash flow went from negative in 2021 to $9.8 billion in 2025:
And it’s still climbing. Third-quarter free cash flow was $2.5 billion, up from $2.2 billion a year earlier.
Eight assistants want in
Shutting out agents would carry a real cost if people start ordering through an assistant and Uber can’t be booked there. Uber is still talking to them, though. Khosrowshahi said “every single AI assistant company is talking to us,” and Uber is “now negotiating the terms of trade.”
He likes Uber’s position in those talks. Most markets have two big ride providers and two big delivery providers, he said, and he has counted eight assistants so far. He expects there to be more than 10.
His Expedia years worked the other way around: many travel sites needed one search engine. Here, a crowd of assistants needs one of the few apps that can actually get a car to your door. If one assistant wants too big a cut, Uber can walk away, and that assistant has no rides to offer.
MercadoLibre is betting on the same advantage. Its own agent is built on “27 years of first-party data,” and it’s already live for a small share of users in its three largest markets. JPMorgan has even more reason to keep its door shut. As Eisman said of the big banks, “You don’t have the luxury of destroying your franchise.”
Priced like the threat is already here
Yet investors are valuing Uber at its lowest forward multiple in three years:
At about 17x forward earnings, against a three-year average of 25x and a peak near 40x in early 2024, investors are paying little for a business that keeps growing. Robotaxis account for most of that fear, and agents give bears one more reason to doubt that Uber can hold on to its customers.
At the end of the day, I think the agent threat is years away. Uber owns its demand and has the cash to keep it, and at this multiple, I think the stock is worth owning.
Of course, it’s very early, as Khosrowshahi said himself, and assistants are getting better fast. Watch whether Uber’s agent volumes start to climb, and on whose terms it signs those deals.
So what is Uber stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
