Good morning. Automation, AI agents, and M&A are top of mind for the on-demand delivery platform and tech company DoorDash.
DoorDash has been working on autonomous delivery, such as drones and sidewalk robots, since 2017. But there have been challenges, Xu said.
“Candidly, it’s mostly been filled with lots of pain and suffering,” he said, explaining that achieving reliable, scalable autonomous delivery requires excelling across multiple domains: hardware, software, network building, and service quality—few companies master all of these simultaneously.
Xu compared the process to learning a multi-level sport and emphasized that DoorDash is still early in building these broad capabilities. However, he noted that DoorDash is beginning to see commercial progress, with successful tests and pilots in the U.S. (including partnering with Coco Robotics for robot delivery), and drone deliveries with Alphabet’s Wing in Australia, for example.
DoorDash builds and deploys AI agents, developed both in-house and with partners. Key use cases include customer service, voice ordering, logistics, and merchant support. “We launched an AI agent to help merchants better buy advertisements and promotions,” Xu said.
DoorDash also announced on Monday an exclusive partnership with Waffle House for the rollout of all-night delivery (9 p.m.–8 a.m.). It’s the first delivery service in Waffle House’s decades in business.
The goal is to deliver in under 15 minutes from when the food is ready, to “offer a quality experience,” Xu said.
