So far, however, Domino’s has stopped short of the latest McDonald’s play: acquiring entire tech start-ups. (Pizza Hut, however, recently acquired a company that produces online ordering software.) In March, McDonald’s spent more than $300 million to buy Dynamic Yield, the Tel Aviv-based company that developed the artificial intelligence tools now used at thousands of McDonald’s drive-throughs.

The deal “has changed the way the high-tech industry thinks about potential M&A,” said Liad Agmon, a former Israeli intelligence official who co-founded Dynamic Yield. “We’ll see more nontraditional tech companies buying tech companies as an accelerator for their digital efforts. It was genius on McDonald’s side.”

Already, the recommendation algorithms built into the drive-through menu boards have generated larger orders, the McDonald’s chief executive, Steve Easterbrook, said during an earnings call in July. (Mr. Henry, the chain’s information executive, declined to reveal the size of the increase.) By the end of the year, the new system is expected to be in place at nearly every McDonald’s drive-through in the United States.

In September, McDonald’s purchased a second tech company, Apprente, a start-up in Mountain View, Calif., that develops voice-activated platforms that can process orders in multiple languages and accents. In recent months, McDonald’s has tested voice recognition at some of its restaurants, seeking to replace the human workers who take orders with a faster system.

McDonald’s insists that the rollout of the voice technology will not cost jobs. But at a time when it faces renewed protests from workers over low wages and sexual harassment, the chain’s new focus on technology could intensify scrutiny of how it treats its workers and how automation may affect them. While McDonalds has reported impressive growth over the last couple of years, some employees at its restaurants make less than $10 an hour.