DoorDash Makes $17 Billion Bet on Groceries With Instacart Deal

(Bloomberg) — DoorDash Inc. agreed to buy rival Instacart in a deal that values the company at about $17 billion, the latest sign of consolidation in an increasingly competitive delivery market.

DoorDash will pay $65 a share in cash and stock, it said Thursday, while also posting its third-quarter earnings ahead of schedule. That represents a 26% premium to Instacart’s closing stock price on Oct. 22, the last trading day before Bloomberg News and the Information reported that the grocery-delivery company was exploring a sale. Bloomberg reported earlier this week that DoorDash and Instacart were in advanced deal talks.

DoorDash plans to use cash on hand and debt from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to finance the purchase, and said it’s aiming for investment-grade ratings. The deal is expected to close toward the end of 2027 or in the first half of 2028, at which point DoorDash plans to keep Instacart’s brand, enterprise technology products and app. 

Shares of Instacart, which trades as Maplebear Inc., rose less than 1% before markets opened in New York. DoorDash’s stock jumped 7.4%. 

The delivery-app segment received a boost during pandemic-era lockdowns, but that momentum has since slowed and the industry has consolidated. In that time, DoorDash has been on a buying spree. It completed its purchase of UK-based Deliveroo last year, in addition to buying hospitality tech company SevenRooms Inc. and ad-tech firm Symbiosys. It also agreed in September to buy Grubhub’s campus dining business. Uber Technologies Inc., which held talks at one point to buy Instacart, signed a deal in July for Germany’s Delivery Hero SE in a bid to grow internationally.

San Francisco-based Instacart went public in 2023, following that pandemic-era surge. It has lately faced heightened competition from rivals that have branched out beyond restaurant takeout into delivering other items. 

For DoorDash, which is already the leading restaurant delivery app in the US, buying Instacart will boost its grocery delivery segment, which co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Tony Xu recently described as the fastest-growing part of the business. The deal would also better position DoorDash to compete with retail giants like Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., which have made online grocery orders a bigger priority.

“Grocery is one of the hardest things to get right online,” Xu said in a statement. “Instacart has spent years learning to do that well for grocers, while DoorDash has built a delivery network and technology that local stores rely on every day. Together, we could give stores of every size more of those tools and unlock the potential of grocery delivery.”

Once the Instacart takeover is complete, customers who subscribe to DashPass and Instacart+ will pay one membership fee instead of two. For couriers, who are independent contractors, DoorDash said they can continue to choose whether to take on DoorDash orders or stick with just fulfilling Instacart shopping requests. And for merchants, DoorDash said the deal would remove exclusivity agreements that grocers had with delivery platforms. 

Instacart’s higher-margin advertising and back-end technology business would bolster DoorDash’s more recent efforts to provide enterprise tools for in-person dining and retailer ad management. Instacart’s enterprise customers include Costco Wholesale Corp., which has used Instacart’s tech to power online ordering in parts of North America and Europe. While transaction revenue continues to comprise the bulk of Instacart’s total revenue, sales for the advertising and enterprise side of the business accounted for 30% in the third quarter, and were faster-growing.

But not all of Instacart’s B2B bets have paid off. The company recently said it will stop offering high-tech shopping carts to grocers, citing the cost of developing the technology and “competing priorities” for its retail customers.

DoorDash Results

On Thursday, DoorDash also reported third-quarter results that pleased Wall Street, providing an early look into consumer demand for delivery services ahead Uber’s results next week.

Gross order value — a closely watched metric that includes the total dollar value of orders, including taxes, tips, membership and other consumer fees — grew 36% to $33.9 billion, beating the average analyst estimate of $33.7 billion. Total orders were also better than expected.

DoorDash gave a gross-order-value outlook for the fourth quarter of $35.4 billion to $36.4 billion. That, too, topped analyst projections.

However, the company continues to expect “significant levels of ongoing investment” in various initiatives including new shopping categories, international markets and its technology stack. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization will be $900 million to $1.1 billion for the last quarter of the year. The midpoint falls slightly short of the average analyst estimate.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.