Delivery app DoorDash will purchase rival delivery grocery service Instacart for $17 billion, the company said on Thursday, further consolidating the delivery app market.
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Key Facts
- DoorDash will purchase Instacart in a deal worth $65 per share, representing a 26% premium on the company’s closing share price of $51.68 on October 22, before news of a potential deal was first reported by The Information.
- Instacart’s stock price reached a high of $62 per share on Monday after the Wall Street Journal reported DoorDash was in advanced talks to purchase the company, turning Instacart’s founder and former CEO Apoorva Mehta into a billionaire.
- At least 75% of the deal will be paid in cash, DoorDash said, and Instacart shareholders will be given the option to receive cash, DoorDash stock or a combination of both.
- DoorDash said it expects the deal to close by the end of 2027 or during the first half of 2028, after it is approved by Instacart shareholders.
- DoorDash said it plans to keep Instacart’s branding, technology and app even after the deal closes.
- DoorDash has now spent billions acquiring some of its rivals, including purchasing GrubHub’s campus dining business for $300 million in September U.K.-based Deliveroo in 2025 in a $3.9 billion deal.
Key Background
DoorDash moved its earnings call, which was originally scheduled for next week, up to Thursday morning to coincide with the news of the acquisition. The company said it hit new quarterly records for revenue, net income and marketplace gross order value—a metric that grew by 36% year over year to $33.9 billion. The company outperformed analyst expectations, even after it agreed to pay out a $131.5 million settlement with New York City for underpaying delivery workers.
Forbes Valuation
We value Instacart founder Mehta’s net worth at $1.3 billion as of Thursday. Mehta founded the company in 2012, and navigated it through expanding rapidly during the Covid-19 pandemic when demand surged. The company went public in 2023 with an initial public offering, which valued it at $9.9 billion. “Tony and I have explored bringing Instacart and DoorDash together on and off over the years,” Mehta said in a statement sent to Forbes on Thursday. “We kept coming back to it because the industrial logic has always been clear.” We estimated Xu’s net worth at $1.6 billion as of Thursday. Xu co-founded DoorDash in 2013, and took his company public in 2020. Mehta said he was “incredibly proud” of his company, and said he was “excited” to see it become “part of a founder-led company again.”
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