AI Agents Are “an Existential Risk to DoorDash”? Seriously? I’ll Take the Under Michael Douglass Mon, November 9, 2026 at 1:43 PM EST 4 min read DASH +1.19% AMZN +3.39% UBER +3.28% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Last week Jason Lemkin called AI agents an existential risk to DoorDash.
I think that's crap, for a number of reasons. Starting with the fact that an agent still needs a delivery network, and DoorDash has the biggest one, plus over 35 million members who already pay it for free delivery.
AI agents have placed only several hundred DoorDash orders, against 993 million orders last quarter, and analysts expect DoorDash's revenue to nearly double from 2025 to 2028.
DoorDash traded at 28x forward earnings before Thursday's drop, well below its three-year average of 39x.
DoorDash (DASH:NASDAQ) has had a rough couple of weeks.
Shares sank 13% last Thursday after Amazon (AMZN:NASDAQ) made Uber Eats its restaurant delivery partner for Prime. Members now get free delivery on Uber Eats orders of $25 or more, placed right on Amazon. That puts Uber (UBER:NYSE), DoorDash's main rival, in front of Prime members across the U.S.
It also adds to a fear that's been hanging over the stock: that AI agents will cut DoorDash out of ordering altogether. Even so, CEO Tony Xu said on DoorDash's third-quarter call that agents had placed "several hundred orders in total" so far. DoorDash handled 993 million orders in that quarter alone.
That figure came up on this week's episode of the 20VC podcast. SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin's take?
"Agents are an existential risk to DoorDash because their number three competitor is nobody."
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I take his point to be this: once an agent orders your dinner, it checks DoorDash and Uber Eats and picks the cheaper one. With no third app in the race, whoever owns the agent owns the customer.
And sure, it's early. Nobody knows how many dinners agents will be ordering five years from now.
But Wall Street isn't expecting customers to flee. Analysts expect DoorDash's revenue to climb from $13.7 billion in 2025 to $25.7 billion in 2028:
Prime members have had a free Grubhub+ perk since 2022, and DoorDash kept growing the whole time. I don't expect the switch to Uber Eats to move things much. And also…
Even in Lemkin's world, an agent can't drive a burrito across town. It has to hand the order to a delivery network, and DoorDash runs the biggest one. It took 59% of delivery-app spending in the third quarter, according to Consumer Edge card data. Uber Eats and Instacart each took 18%.
Then there are the members. DoorDash had over 35 million of them across DashPass, Wolt+ and Deliveroo Plus at the end of 2025. (I'm one of them, for what it's worth.)
Let's say a future world where agents are the vast majority of orders happens. So, my future agent orders Friday's pizza, Tuesday's pad thai and Sunday's grocery run. Every time, it knows I already pay DoorDash for free delivery. Which app do you think it picks?
Amazon just made the same bet with Uber Eats: Whoever holds that membership gets the order.
I'd also argue DoorDash is better off with no number-three competitor. Two profitable players have little reason to start a price war, agents or no agents. Uber's Delivery operating income grew 30% to $1.06 billion in the third quarter. DoorDash's own operating margin went from -14.6% in 2022 to 6.1% in 2025:
I do share one of Lemkin's worries: ads. A customer who orders through an agent, or through Amazon's app, never sees DoorDash's ad slots. Management credited ads for part of its second-quarter beat.
DoorDash is fighting for that front door too. On Thursday, Lyft launched a $9.99-a-month membership that includes DashPass.
Meanwhile, investors are paying a lot less for DoorDash's earnings than they used to. The stock trades under 30x forward earnings, well below its three-year average of 39x.
The way I see it, agents are a slow-moving risk to DoorDash's ad business and a smaller one to the deliveries themselves. At this price, I'm happy to take the under on "existential."
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