Restaurant delivery and grocery delivery grew up as separate businesses in the United States, and they may soon share an owner. Talks between the two have reached an advanced stage, and an agreement valuing Instacart at around $17 billion could be finalized as soon as this week, according to the Wall Street Journal, whose sources also said the deal might still fall apart. The grocery app had been exploring its options before DoorDash emerged as the leading bidder. Instacart had held preliminary conversations with potential buyers including Uber, now those talks no longer active, as per coverage from Reuters. Instacart shares rose while DoorDash's fell on Monday.
For DoorDash, a purchase would extend an acquisition record that has already carried it well beyond its origins in American restaurant delivery. The San Francisco-based company runs marketplaces in the United States and Europe under the DoorDash, Wolt and more recently Deliveroo names, having closed its roughly $3.9 billion purchase of the latter in October 2025. Those European deals brought new couriers, merchants and customers onto a platform built around U.S. restaurants. Instacart would add something different: a grocery marketplace in DoorDash's home market, with retailer relationships that took years to assemble.
Grocery has been a priority at DoorDash for several years, but it has proved slower to turn a profit than restaurant orders. On its second-quarter call in August, management said the newer categories beyond restaurants were on track to become gross-profit positive by year-end, while declining to discuss the economics of specific grocery partners, according to the company record. Owning Instacart would hand DoorDash a grocery business already operating at scale rather than one still being built out. It would also be a fourth marketplace to integrate, on top of the European brands acquired in recent years.
The path from handshake to closing runs through regulators. DoorDash's annual report names Uber Eats and Amazon among its competitors and warns of an increasingly active antitrust environment in which authorities may block, delay or attach conditions to a transaction.