Wonder's $9 Billion Bet: Marc Lore Plots IPO, Texas Push

Marc Lore's Wonder carries a $9 billion pre-money valuation from its Series D round earlier this year, and the founder says an IPO is the next step — timing aside. "[The mission] is really why I want to go public and raise the capital that it'll take to build that kind of generational business, also to have a public currency to be able to do more M&A," Lore told CNBC. "But I can't talk about timing."

Lore founded Wonder in 2018. The company describes itself as "the best restaurants from across the country, all in one place," or in his own words: "Wonder is a vertically integrated food technology platform to make great food more accessible." It has raised $3.3 billion to date from investors including DoorDash, Alphabet's venture arm GV and Gwyneth Paltrow.

What does the $9 billion buy?

Wonder has spent more than $1 billion on disclosed acquisitions: Grubhub, delivery and logistics provider Relay, meal-kit company Blue Apron, and New York restaurant concepts including Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken and Salt Hank's. Owning Grubhub means customers who order through the Wonder app pay no delivery fees, and menu prices aren't inflated to cover platform commissions.

The company aims to keep prices below the cost of delivered groceries, and it's automating kitchen functions — salads and bowls now, sauces and beverages soon. Lore targets fully autonomous food preparation and delivery by 2040.

In March, Wonder hired Gabrielle Scheibe Rabinovitch, previously of payment processor Worldpay, as CFO to prepare for a public listing. Lore has previously told Fortune the company will be "ready and prepared to go public early next year." The Information previously reported Wonder has operated at a financial loss since buying Blue Apron and Grubhub.

Can Lore repeat the Jet.com playbook?

Lore's track record is e-commerce, not restaurants. He sold Diapers.com's parent to Amazon in 2010 for $545 million, then sold Jet.com to Walmart in 2016 for about $3 billion. He stayed at Walmart until 2021. In 2021, he and Alex Rodriguez agreed to buy the Minnesota Timberwolves for $1.5 billion; the deal closed in 2025, and in August Rodriguez said Lore would shrink to a minority stake "to focus on his business" — Wonder.

"I joke around at GV that I do enterprise software investing, AI investing and anything that Marc Lore is running as an active CEO," said Dave Munichiello, GV's managing partner, who has known Lore since the Diapers.com days. Lore's own framing is simpler: "Everybody eats. It's defensible from AI."

Why Texas, why now?

Wonder operates 170 storefronts from Virginia to Massachusetts, opened over the last three years. Next year it enters Texas for the first time, targeting at least 100 locations in the state by the end of 2027.

The model: food is prepped at commissary kitchens, then finished on-site by employees. Stores are all-electric, with no gas or venting, which cuts renovation costs and red tape. Each location serves more than two dozen "restaurants" — Dabba Indian Kitchen, Tejas Barbecue, Pop Salad — and celebrity chefs including Bobby Flay, Michael Symon and Marcus Samuelsson receive up-front payments and equity to license their names.

Starting Nov. 17, Wonder Create lets influencers, entrepreneurs and brands pay $10 a month to launch their own "restaurant" from a Wonder location and take a share of revenue. AI will help build the brand, name, logo, pricing and recipes. "It could be a restaurant for you and your friends, or you could be an influencer that has a following," Lore said. A separate AI platform, MEL, would use health data from Oura rings, Whoop trackers or blood biomarkers to plan meals; it's not yet available to customers.

Is it just a ghost kitchen?

Lore rejects the comparison to ghost kitchens like Kitchen United, which sought bankruptcy protection as post-pandemic delivery orders fell. "You can see there's a front of house [in the] brick and mortar," he said. "You'll see people at lunchtime, sitting there enjoying lunch, so it's not ghost-y in that way."

Skeptics abound on social media. "It's OK, but it's just average," Philadelphia's Amir Ings, 27, said in a late-2025 TikTok reviewing three tacos. "I paid like $16 for this, but it should have been no more than $8." Lore counters that Wonder collects thousands of daily customer reviews rating taste, temperature and portion on a 1-to-10 scale. "We're maniacally focused on food quality," he said. "Our taste scores have improved, our Google reviews have improved." Munichiello said board meetings open with taste scores.

Transaction data from Indagari shows Wonder beats Cava and Sweetgreen on weighted average retention and lifetime value. Still, investors have grown less tolerant of growth-at-all-costs startups, according to Avery Marquez of Renaissance Capital — and unprofitable companies must show a credible path to profitability or durable growth to win an IPO. That's the bar Wonder has to clear.