Xu’s discussion of “third-party agent” orders also doesn’t include DoorDash’s own internal AI tools. Those include an “Ask DoorDash” feature the company rolled out this summer that can, for instance, create an online shopping cart from a photograph of a recipe or suggest an order based on a vague description like “dinner for a family of four.”

DoorDash hasn’t shared detailed statistics on that kind of usage, but the company said last month that Ask DoorDash baskets get built “five times faster” than those built without, and Ask DoorDash orders “average nearly 50% higher basket value and about 60% more unique items than the same consumers’ traditional orders.” The company also said nearly half of Ask DoorDash orders end up at “local spots the consumer has never tried before,” helping with discovery of new area restaurants.

That’s all to say that DoorDash’s current experience with agentic ordering may be a bit like Pizza Hut’s first tentative online ordering experiments in 1994 .…