DoorDash posts another record quarter

“Sooo… what about generative AI?” — Wall Street

Here’s what a generative AI program gave me when I asked for an image of “DoorDash AI.” The future!

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu wants Wall Street to understand the company’s room for growth in restaurants. Meanwhile, Wall Street is already looking past the company’s winning market share, asking how artificial intelligence will boost future profits. 

DoorDash posted its highest revenue ever in the first three months of the year, making just over $2 billion. Its order frequency also broke records; there were 512 million orders in the quarter. The numbers beat analyst expectations yet again. 

Even as DoorDash launches new business in verticals like grocery and beauty, its core business — restaurants — has the potential to get much, much bigger. People eat 20 to 25 times per week, Xu explained no fewer than four times during the company’s first quarter earnings call last week. “[It] is the highest possible shopping category that we have relative to other categories,” he said. 

But some analysts on the May 4 call looked past the good news in front of them toward the promise of generative AI, using precious quarterly question-and-answer time to confirm DoorDash leadership isn’t ignoring the hype transformative power of the technology. (“Generative AI” refers to tools like ChatGPT, that use artificial intelligence to generate new words and images.) 

According to its CEO, DoorDash is experimenting with AI. 

When asked,