DoorDash Pays $17 Billion for Instacart to Crack Grocery

DoorDash has agreed to buy Instacart for $17 billion, locking up the largest third-party grocery delivery platform in America and extending its lead in local delivery. The deal, announced via DoorDash's investor relations site, briefly knocked the $73 billion company's stock down earlier this week when acquisition reports first surfaced — a sign some investors have concerns about the tie-up.

Instacart, founded in 2012, partners with roughly 2,200 stores across nearly 100,000 locations. For DoorDash, the acquisition fills the one category missing from an aggressive 18-month spending spree:

• $3.9 billion for European delivery service Deliveroo
• $1.2 billion for restaurant reservations platform SevenRooms
• $300 million for Grubhub's campus dining business
• $175 million for ad platform Symbiosys

Why grocery, and why now?

DoorDash is still fundamentally a restaurant-delivery app. U.S. restaurant order value grew as much in the second quarter of this year as it did in all of 2022, and the company posted $13.7 billion in revenue in 2025, most of it presumably from restaurants. But usage is shifting. In Q2 2026, DashPass subscription members placed roughly three-quarters of DoorDash's U.S. grocery and retail orders.

During an August earnings call, CEO Tony Xu called grocery the "fastest-growing part of our marketplace business."

This is DoorDash's second run at Instacart. It first added grocers to its app in summer 2020, when pandemic lockdowns boomed digital grocery. A year later, DoorDash reportedly weighed buying Instacart at $40 billion to $50 billion, according to Reuters. That deal collapsed over concerns about Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan's antitrust enforcement under President Joe Biden. Instacart instead went public in 2023 at a $10 billion valuation — a fraction of its pandemic peak.

The timing works better now. Walmart and Amazon control roughly half of online grocery sales, leaving chains like Albertsons, Fred Meyer, and Safeway to fight for the rest through delivery partners. Market research firm eMarketer estimated Instacart will control roughly 65% of the third-party U.S. grocery delivery market in 2026. In Q2 2026 alone, Instacart sold $10.35 billion worth of goods through its network.

What do the two companies' technologies share?

Both are building in-store data tools, and the overlap looks deliberate. In September, Instacart announced an initiative to map store shelves in real time, giving managers a virtual aisle-by-aisle view of products. Days later, DoorDash launched a similar offering for consumer packaged goods brands that uses couriers to photograph shelves while picking orders, tracking availability and substitution patterns.

Xu framed the strategy earlier this year: "We're also building a digital catalog of structured information for the physical world," he said, "collecting where every banana sits or every ripe or unripe avocado." What sounded like a hedge against AI creep in third-party marketplaces now reads as a plan to dominate grocery the way DoorDash dominates restaurants.

DoorDash claims it leads Instacart in retail order volume, though it doesn't break out sales by vertical. The company has said it expects grocery and retail unit economics to turn positive in the second half of the year.

What does the deal mean for Uber Eats?

The acquisition also shuts out Uber Eats, DoorDash's chief rival, which has powered restaurant delivery inside the Instacart app since 2024 through a dedicated "restaurants" tab. An October 23 report from The Information suggested Uber might acquire Instacart itself, but the outlet later amended the story to say those talks had stopped.

Xu signaled his appetite for deals on the Q2 earnings call. "We have improving unit economics across all of our categories," he said, adding that business is booming across restaurants, retail, geographies and advertising. "Ultimately, we're here always seeking the next best investment. It doesn't mean that we always make those investments. But when we see the opportunity, we're always leaning in."