Uber's $2.3 Billion ezCater Deal Leads Wave of Boom-Era Startup Buyouts

By Daniel Okafor

Uber paid $2.3 billion in cash this month for ezCater, a Boston-based platform for catering and workplace meals that had not disclosed a new venture round in nearly five years. The deal anchors a broader pattern: acquirers are buying well-funded startups that went quiet on the fundraising circuit years ago, according to an analysis of Crunchbase data.

Several of these startups carry names from the 2021 unicorn boom. Airtable, Headspace and Miro — all one-time highfliers — have sold in recent months. The valuations are not puny, but they sit far below former peaks.

Who is getting acquired?

Crunchbase assembled a list of 15 deals involving well-funded companies that had not raised equity funding in four or more years. The list shows that a long funding drought does not kill exit odds. Buyers keep circling aging startups, and several deals closed only in the past few months.

What kept these startups alive?

Valuations peaked in 2021 and early 2022. Companies that raised then struggled to attract fresh capital afterward, or refused to close new rounds at reduced prices. The AI boom did not help this cohort much either.

But the boom-era rounds were large. That gave funded startups room to cut operating costs and stretch their runways on existing capital. Many kept running — and some kept growing — without touching venture markets again.

ezCater shows the mechanism. In the year before its acquisition, the company generated more than $2.5 billion in gross bookings. It grew at an annual rate in the high teens. Average order sizes ran over $400. Even so, that performance did not secure a fat premium: Uber's $2.3 billion purchase price sits 53% above the $1.5 billion pre-money valuation ezCater secured in its last funding round in late 2021.

How far below peak are the deals?

In many cases, the step-downs are steep.

• Miro. The San Francisco online collaboration provider agreed last month to sell to Bending Spoons in a deal valued around $1.36 billion. Its last round, in early 2022, closed at a $17.5 billion post-money valuation.
• Airtable. Bending Spoons bought the data and workflow platform for $1.28 billion in August. That is barely over one-tenth of the $11 billion valuation Airtable secured in its December 2021 Series F.
• Everlane. The fashion startup, valued in the hundreds of millions in 2020, sold to fast-fashion leader Shein this spring for $100 million.
• Headspace. The meditation and mental health app sold to Sword Health in a deal reportedly valued around $300 million, well below its peak post-money valuation of about $2.6 billion.

Is a below-peak exit a bad outcome?

Investors are not celebrating buyouts priced far under private-market highs. But these outcomes are not the worst case. For the startups themselves, they fall far short of catastrophe.

Every unicorn investor wants high-multiple returns. For startups that go years without new funding, the market appears to have ruled those out. A cash buyer at a discount has become the realistic exit path — and, for a cohort written off after the boom ended, a working one.