How Instacart Ended Up in DoorDash’s Cart

That was fast! DoorDash said this morning that it agreed to buy grocery delivery app Instacart for roughly $17 billion, mostly in cash financed by borrowing, just a few days after we reported that Instacart was in talks to sell itself.

After our report, DoorDash and Instacart rushed to seal the deal at a roughly 30% premium to where Instacart shares traded before we broke the news of their talks. They wanted to get it signed before both reported quarterly earnings, which were originally scheduled for next week, say people familiar with the matter. Both companies reported earnings today instead. A deal could take a year or longer to close.

So how did this deal come together?

Over the years, DoorDash’s leaders have thought about buying Instacart to buttress their grocery sales, according to people familiar with the discussions. Uber, a competitor to DoorDash in restaurant deliveries through Uber Eats, had also talked to Instacart about an acquisition before 2026, and it has had a commercial partnership with Instacart for years.

Since going public, Instacart’s annual revenue growth has slowed considerably—to 11% in 2025. (In the third quarter, sales increased 17%, according to the earnings report the company released today.) It faces considerable competition from Amazon and Walmart, which both offer grocery deliveries: Walmart accounted for nearly 32% of all online grocery sales in 2025, while Amazon had almost 23%, according to a report from eMarketer, a market research firm. And last year it lost longtime CEO Fidji Simo to OpenAI and Chief Product Officer Daniel Danker to Walmart.

So this year, Instacart’s leaders believed it was the right time to sell, according to people familiar with the matter.

Instacart leaders also didn’t want to miss a window to merge with a competitor during the Trump administration, which it viewed as being friendlier to such deals, said the people familiar with the deal.

Around late August, Instacart leaders shopped the company to Uber, according to people familiar with the matter. Uber executives felt obliged to take a look and started talking. Instacart told Uber that it thought a deal could make it past antitrust regulators by arguing that Walmart and Amazon were larger, formidable competitors, according to a person familiar with the pitch.

Instacart brought on Goldman Sachs, which took Instacart public in 2023, to advise them on a deal. (The grocery delivery firm has long been close to the investment bank, and Goldman partner Nick Giovanni served as Instacart’s chief financial officer from 2021 to 2024.)

After talking with Uber, Instacart began conversations with DoorDash, people with knowledge of the discussions. Working with boutique bank Centerview Partners, DoorDash sprang to action, the people said. In 2021, DoorDash had considered buying Instacart in a deal that would’ve valued Instacart at more than $40 billion. Nothing happened partly because they thought the acquisition would face antitrust opposition from the Biden administration. While Instacart’s revenue growth has slowed since then, it has started to generate plenty of cash.

Uber wasn’t as keen on a deal. It wasn’t necessarily convinced that regulators would sign off, and it had recently announced another big acquisition, a $15 billion deal for Europe-based Delivery Hero, people close to Uber said. Uber ultimately pulled away from the Instacart talks in September. Instacart then moved ahead with DoorDash.

A sale to DoorDash could help Instacart compete against Amazon and Walmart by getting in front of relatively well-to-do customers who regularly use the restaurant-delivery app. DoorDash already offers grocery delivery from retailers such as Safeway, in addition to its core restaurant-delivery business. (Some grocers like Kroger already work with both companies, however.)

Research firm Bernstein estimated Tuesday that a combination of DoorDash and Instacart would account for 23% of all online grocery sales in the U.S.

Wedbush Securities analysts said in a note to investors this week that they expect regulators will be OK with DoorDash buying Instacart. Still, some grocers that work with both companies might not love the deal, so even if U.S. authorities approve it, state attorneys general might review the merger of competitors themselves.

It isn’t clear what will happen to Instacart’s partnership with Uber, in which customers can order Uber Eats from the Instacart app. But DoorDash said it’s keeping Instacart as a separate brand after the deal closes.

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