# Shopping agents work inside the store. Amazon and DoorDash say outside agents barely register URL: https://www.thedeepfeed.ai/posts/2026-10-31-shopping-agents-stay-inside-the-store/ Category: Agents Published: 2026-10-31 Author: the-deep-feed Tags: agents, commerce, amazon, doordash, meta, muse, earnings, shopping-agents Kind: news > On their October 29 earnings calls, Amazon said few customers shop through outside agents while its own Alexa for Shopping reached 400 million+ users, and DoorDash counted several hundred third-party agent orders against 993 million, showing agent commerce growing inside merchants' own apps. ## TL;DR - Amazon's **Alexa for Shopping** was used by **400 million+** customers in the last 12 months, with interactions up **570%**. Andy Jassy said few customers buy through outside agents because the experience is 'still not great.' - DoorDash's CEO said third-party agents such as Muse have sent 'maybe several hundred orders in total,' in a quarter when DoorDash handled **993 million** orders. - Meta's numbers point the other way: **10 million+** people have set up Muse, more than a quarter use it to shop, and the average purchase tops **$200**, according to Zuckerberg's remarks reported by Fortune. - The largest merchants are building their own agents while outside agents drive little volume so far. DoorDash's earnings release says its strategy 'remains focused on winning the battle for atoms.' The two biggest earnings calls for online ordering this week showed agent shopping growing, but inside the merchants' own apps. Amazon's own shopping agent reached more than 400 million customers in a year, while DoorDash said outside agents had sent it "maybe several hundred orders in total" in a quarter of 993 million orders. # Amazon: our agent yes, theirs not yet Amazon's [third-quarter release](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000038/amzn-20260930xex991.htm) on October 29 described "Alexa for Shopping, its agentic shopping assistant, which was used by 400 million+ customers in the last 12 months, with customer interactions up 570% year-over-year." It added "100+ new capabilities," so that tasks such as building gift lists or adjusting Subscribe & Save deliveries "can now be completed with simple conversations." Outside agents got a different reception on the call. Without naming Meta's Muse, Andy Jassy said few customers are buying with outside shopping agents because the experience is "still not great, nor more convenient than coming to a retailer directly," according to [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/10/29/amazon-ceo-says-shopping-agents-like-metas-muse-not-great/). Fortune also reported that Jassy said outside agents were not the cause of Amazon's weaker-than-expected advertising performance in the quarter, and that U.S. customers using Amazon's own agent spend 50% more per order than those who do not. The context is a block. Amazon stopped Muse from accessing its store in September, saying Muse's access would violate the conditions of use its customers had agreed to, as Fortune recounts and as this publication [noted in its October 13 survey](/posts/2026-10-13-always-on-agents/) of always-on agents. Fortune's explanation of why Amazon cares is straightforward: an outside agent "bypasses the usual process of humans visiting its website or app and seeing the advertisements that serve as a key profit driver for the company." # DoorDash: several hundred orders, against 993 million DoorDash gave the starkest number. On its call, chief executive Tony Xu said that "we're seeing maybe several hundred orders in total from some of these third-party agents," according to [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/30/doordash-said-its-only-received-several-hundred-orders-from-ai-agents/), which listed Muse, Instinct and Fo among them. Xu framed it carefully: "you never want to fight gravity. But at the same time, you don't want to be delusional." The denominator is in DoorDash's [results](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1792789/000179278926000062/proddashex991-pressrelease.htm): "Total Orders increased 28% year-over-year (Y/Y) to 993 million" in the third quarter. That works out to roughly 10.8 million orders a day across the quarter's 92 days. Several hundred agent orders in total is a rounding error against that volume. DoorDash's earnings release explains where it is putting its effort. "As AI personal agents are now starting to become more mainstream, our strategy today remains focused on winning the battle for atoms," it says, meaning the physical delivery network. It adds that the company "recently shipped a series of AI agents that solve real customer problems," naming Ask DoorDash, which helps customers find restaurants and build grocery baskets, Text DoorDash, and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) that interfaces with external AI agents for corporate ordering. # Meta's numbers measure something else Meta's figures look like the opposite story. Mark Zuckerberg said the week before that more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada had set up Muse since its early-September launch, that shopping is its most common use with more than a quarter of users engaging in it, and that the average purchase tops $200, according to Fortune. Fortune lists Shopify, Walmart and Best Buy as partners that welcome Muse. The two sets of numbers measure different things. Meta's count is of people using Muse; Amazon's and DoorDash's describe what reaches a particular merchant. Muse has signed partners that welcome it, Amazon has not joined them, and DoorDash's count shows how little volume has reached a large merchant from outside agents so far. Zuckerberg's own comment, quoted by Fortune, acknowledges the terms are being negotiated store by store: "We'll work with folks on the terms that makes sense for them." # The store decides Read together, the week's disclosures describe a market where the merchant controls the doorway. The companies with the most orders are building their own agents—with Amazon reporting large usage numbers for its assistant—and treating outside agents as either a partnership negotiation (Meta's retail partners), a tiny source of volume so far (DoorDash), or a breach of terms (Amazon). The always-on agents launched since August were sold on doing errands across every app a user has. On this week's evidence, customer orders at the biggest merchants are still staying inside the merchants' own apps. For anyone forecasting agent commerce, the useful metric is not how many people have installed a general-purpose agent. It is how many orders actually reach large merchants through one. Amazon and DoorDash just answered that for their own stores: few customers at Amazon, and "several hundred orders in total" at DoorDash. ## Sources - [SEC — Amazon Q3 2026 results, Exhibit 99.1 (Oct 29, 2026)](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000038/amzn-20260930xex991.htm) - [Fortune — Amazon CEO says shopping agents like Meta's Muse 'not great' (Oct 29, 2026)](https://fortune.com/2026/10/29/amazon-ceo-says-shopping-agents-like-metas-muse-not-great/) - [SEC — DoorDash Q3 2026 results, Exhibit 99.1 (Oct 29, 2026)](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1792789/000179278926000062/proddashex991-pressrelease.htm) - [TechCrunch — DoorDash said it's only received 'several hundred' orders from AI agents (Oct 30, 2026)](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/30/doordash-said-its-only-received-several-hundred-orders-from-ai-agents/) --- Canonical: https://www.thedeepfeed.ai/posts/2026-10-31-shopping-agents-stay-inside-the-store/ Site: https://www.thedeepfeed.ai Full corpus: https://www.thedeepfeed.ai/llms-full.txt