DoorDash announced Thursday that it would buy Instacart for $17 billion, uniting one of the nation’s leading grocery delivery services with a major food delivery company.
DoorDash, which will pay $65 per share for Instacart, said the acquisition would benefit communities by allowing more supermarkets to use Instacart’s platform to run their websites.
“Instacart has spent years learning how to do this well for grocers, while DoorDash has built a delivery network and technology that local stores rely on every day,” Tony Xu, co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, said in a statement. “Together, we could offer stores of all sizes more of these tools and unlock the potential of grocery delivery.”
Consumers will benefit from greater store selection, faster delivery options and access to savings when shopping locally, DoorDash also said in announcing the acquisition.
“Instacart customers could shop at more than 50,000 additional stores, in addition to the nearly 100,000 stores on the Instacart platform today,” DoorDash said.
Instacart, founded in 2012, specializes in grocery and convenience store delivery across the United States and Canada.
DoorDash was founded a year later in San Francisco as a restaurant delivery company and expanded into grocery delivery in 2020 amid a pandemic-induced surge in demand. The San Francisco-based company later partnered with supermarket chain Kroger in 2022 and Costco last month.
The deal will strengthen DoorDash’s grocery delivery services, making it a stronger competitor to Amazon and Walmart.
DoorDash’s most recent earnings report, released Wednesday, shows its revenue increased 34% from last year. The total number of orders increased by 28%, a sign that the company continues to grow in a very competitive delivery sector. At the end of 2024, DoorDash had nearly 61% of the food delivery market share, surpassing Uber Eats and Grubhub, which had about 26% and 6%, respectively, according to Consumer Edge.
Survival of the greatest
The acquisition is the latest sign of consolidation in the delivery services sector, which is increasingly dominated by larger players. As competition heats up, companies like Instacart are struggling to maintain market share. Instacart now accounts for 18% of spending on delivery platforms in the United States, up from 26% five years ago, according to Consumer Edge, a market research company.
DoorDash’s acquisition of Instacart also comes as more people migrate from in-person stores to apps to order their weekly groceries. Nearly 150 million Americans shopped online in 2025, according to Capital One.
As online shopping becomes more prevalent, some companies are experimenting with personalized pricing, which involves using AI and consumer data to charge shoppers different prices for the same item.
The advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative called the practice unfair and predatory. During a months-long investigation last year, the group found that identical groceries on Instacart could differ in price depending on up to 23% from one customer to another.
Federal regulators are now examining these practices. The Federal Trade Commission announced Thursday that it has opened an investigation into DoorDash and Instacart, along with seven other retail and transportation companies, to examine how they set prices.
DoorDash, which has a market value of $73 billion, said the companies would operate as separate entities until the merger is finalized, which is expected in late 2027 or early 2028. Once the deal closes, DoorDash said it plans to keep Instacart’s brand, technology and app.
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