DoorDash today agreed to acquire Instacart for $65.00 a share, an equity value of approximately $17 billion and a 26% premium to Instacart's closing price on October 22, 2026. At least 75% of the consideration will be paid in cash. Instacart's board has unanimously approved the agreement, which the two companies expect to close at the end of 2027 or in the first half of 2028, once Instacart stockholders have voted and antitrust reviews in the United States, Canada and Israel are complete.

In Short

DoorDash, the app many people use to order restaurant meals, has agreed to buy Instacart, the app many families use for their weekly grocery shop, for about $17 billion. Both companies also sell advertising to food and household brands, and Instacart builds the shopping websites and ad systems that many supermarkets use under their own names, so one company would end up owning both sets of tools and the ad budgets that flow through them. Nothing changes yet: the two stay separate until Instacart's shareholders and competition regulators in the US, Canada and Israel sign off, which the companies expect to take until late 2027 or the first half of 2028.

The price

The announcement, distributed through Business Wire with a San Francisco dateline, sets out a definitive agreement between DoorDash, Inc., listed on Nasdaq under the ticker DASH, and Maplebear Inc., the registered corporate name of Instacart, listed on Nasdaq as CART. According to the release, the merger will run through Ibiza Merger Sub, Inc., a wholly owned DoorDash subsidiary.

The $65.00 price represents a 26% premium to Instacart's close on October 22, which the release describes as "the last trading day before media reports about a possible transaction." The release does not name the outlets or say what they reported. Working back from the stated premium, PPC Land calculates that Instacart closed at roughly $51.60 that Thursday.

Instacart stockholders get three choices for each share they hold: $65.00 in cash; 0.3372 shares of DoorDash common stock; or a mix of $48.75 in cash and 0.0843 DoorDash shares. Whatever holders choose, DoorDash stock cannot exceed 25% of the aggregate consideration. If too many holders ask for stock, they will receive it "on a prorated basis," according to the release, and the forward-looking statements warn of "the possibility that Instacart stockholders may receive a form of consideration different from what they elect as a result of proration."

The ratios embed a fixed reference price for DoorDash shares. Dividing $65.00 by 0.3372 gives about $192.76. The mixed option lands on the same figure: 0.0843 shares at $192.76 are worth $16.25, and $16.25 plus $48.75 in cash makes $65.00. Those are PPC Land's calculations. Because the share ratio is fixed, the value of the stock election will rise and fall with DoorDash's share price until closing, while the cash election will not. The mixed option, as written, mirrors the deal's overall split of 75% cash and 25% stock.

On an equity value of approximately $17 billion, a 75% cash floor means at least $12.75 billion in cash and no more than about $4.25 billion in DoorDash stock, again by PPC Land's arithmetic. Divided by $65.00, the equity value also implies roughly 260 million Instacart shares; the release does not give the share count behind it.

Financing

According to DoorDash, the cash portion will be funded "with cash on hand and proceeds from debt financing." The company has signed a commitment letter with JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. for a 364-day senior unsecured bridge loan facility to support the debt component, subject to customary conditions. The transaction is not subject to a financing condition, which means DoorDash cannot walk away on the grounds that the borrowing fell through. DoorDash said it is "targeting a capital structure that will maintain investment-grade ratings." How much it intends to borrow, and how much cash it holds today, are not in the release.

Advisors, votes and filings

Centerview Partners LLC is lead financial advisor to DoorDash, and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC is also advising the company. Latham & Watkins LLP is DoorDash's legal counsel. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. acted as sole lead arranger and bookrunner on the committed bridge financing. On the other side, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC is Instacart's financial advisor, with Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and Cooley LLP as legal counsel.

Stockholders holding about 19% of Instacart's outstanding shares have agreed to vote in favor. The release does not identify them. DoorDash intends to file a registration statement on Form S-4 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which will include Instacart's proxy statement and double as DoorDash's prospectus for the new shares. The forward-looking statements refer to circumstances "requiring a party to pay a termination fee or reimburse expenses," confirming that the merger agreement contains such provisions, but no amount is given.

DoorDash also said it would report its third quarter 2026 results separately today and discuss the transaction on its earnings call at 5:30 a.m. Pacific time.

What DoorDash is buying

The companies describe a division of labour between the two apps. "Families turn to Instacart for the big weekly shop and to DoorDash for meals and nearly anything else they need from their neighborhood in under an hour," according to the release.

Instacart partners with more than 2,200 retail banners, representing nearly 100,000 stores, according to its own description. It operates three lines of business: the Instacart Marketplace, the Instacart Enterprise platform and what it calls the Instacart Ads ecosystem. Through them, according to Instacart, the company "powers ecommerce, fulfillment, in-store technology, AI offerings, and advertising for partners."

DoorDash, founded in 2013, says it has facilitated more than 10 billion consumer orders, driven more than $230 billion in sales for merchants and helped Dashers earn more than $80 billion, in more than 40 countries. It operates through the DoorDash, Deliveroo, SevenRooms and Wolt brands. The list has grown by acquisition. DoorDash completed its £2.8 billion purchase of Deliveroo on October 2, 2025, and on September 30 this year it presented DashOS, a layer that ties SevenRooms reservations and loyalty data to DoorDash's marketplace for restaurants. At about $17 billion, the Instacart agreement is several times the size of the Deliveroo purchase.

After closing, DoorDash "is expected to keep Instacart's brand, enterprise technology products, and app." Until then, according to the release, "DoorDash and Instacart will continue to operate as separate and independent companies." The release does not say who will run Instacart after the deal closes, or what role Chris Rogers, its chief executive, will take.

The executives' case

Tony Xu, co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, framed the deal around the operational difficulty of grocery. "Grocery is one of the hardest things to get right online. Someone has to pick a ripe avocado, find a substitute you'd choose yourself, and get the ice cream to you before it melts," Xu said. "Instacart has spent years learning to do that well for grocers, while DoorDash has built a delivery network and technology that local stores rely on every day. Together, we could give stores of every size more of those tools and unlock the potential of grocery delivery. It's still early innings, but we know that when more people shop local, more dollars stay local."

Rogers pointed to Instacart's retailer and brand relationships. "Over the last 14 years, Instacart has transformed online grocery by helping retailers of all sizes compete and grow, and joining forces with DoorDash allows us to do even more," he said. "When our purpose-built grocery technology and trusted retailer and brand relationships are combined with DoorDash's global consumer reach and logistics capabilities, we can create new opportunities for our retail and brand partners, offer an even better experience for customers and shoppers, and deliver compelling value for our shareholders. Together, we can accelerate innovation across the grocery industry and make online grocery more seamless and affordable for the millions of households we serve."

Xu's statement is hedged, with "we could" and "early innings." Rogers' is not, and his reference to "brand partners" is a reminder that, in Instacart's business, those partners include the consumer goods companies that buy its advertising.

Local stores against the largest retailers

The release builds its argument around a contest between independent grocers and the biggest players in retail. "The biggest online retailers and grocers are racing ahead, building their own delivery fleets, warehouses, membership programs, and AI shopping assistants," it says. "A grocer or retailer running on thin margins cannot build all of that alone, and with AI, the playing field risks being tilted even further away from local commerce."

No rival is named. Amazon and Walmart are absent from the text, and so is Uber, which competes with both DoorDash and Instacart in delivery. PPC Land's coverage fills in what the description points to. Amazon launched Amazon Now, a delivery service promising orders in under 30 minutes, across US cities on May 12, 2026, at $3.99 per order for Prime members. By late August, Amazon said fresh groceries held six of the top 20 bestseller slots on Amazon.com, with same-day perishable delivery available in more than 2,300 US cities and towns, and described itself as the second-largest grocer in the United States without citing a source. Walmart's advertising business is expanding at a similar clip: Walmart Connect, its US retail media arm, grew 43% in the quarter ended July 31, 2026, after Walmart's global advertising revenue reached $6.4 billion in the previous fiscal year.

The framing has a regulatory dimension. A competition authority reviewing a merger first decides which market the companies compete in. If that market is third-party delivery apps, DoorDash and Instacart look like two of its largest players combining. If it includes the in-house delivery, membership and advertising operations of the largest retailers, the combined company looks smaller. The release consistently describes the second picture.

There is evidence for the first one, too. When CommerceIQ added DoorDash Ads to its platform in June 2026, it cited YipitData research describing DoorDash as the leading third-party marketplace by order volume across US grocery and retail in 2025, a category that excludes retailers' own channels. No figure for the size of that lead was published.

The reference to "AI shopping assistants" is also pointed. Instacart is already one of the services such assistants plug into: Google's AI Mode in Search began routing grocery requests to Instacart on July 16, 2026, as one of three launch partners for connected apps, with AI Mode building the cart and checkout completed in Instacart's app or website.

For grocers that lack their own fleets, the release names a specific DoorDash product. Grocers "could add capacity for online orders through DoorDash's DashMart Fulfillment Services and offer faster, more accurate, and more affordable delivery," according to the announcement. DoorDash introduced DashMart Fulfillment Services with its third quarter 2025 results as logistics infrastructure for retailers. DashMart itself, DoorDash's network of company-run convenience and grocery locations, is a quick commerce operation, a model whose economics depend on order density.

Two ad businesses under one owner

For the advertising market, the most consequential lines in the release are short. The combined company will offer grocers and retailers "DoorDash's delivery network and Instacart's grocery and fulfillment technology, in both apps and on stores' own websites, along with the advertising and AI tools each company has built." And: "More grocers could deploy Instacart's technology to run their own websites and retail media networks, bringing them more sales and advertising revenue. Brands would gain a scaled alternative for reaching customers online."

That second passage describes two different roles. Instacart sells advertising inside its own marketplace. It also supplies the technology behind grocers' own shopping sites and their retail media networks, a white-label arrangement in which the retailer's brand faces the shopper and the advertiser while Instacart runs the systems underneath. After closing, DoorDash would hold both roles, alongside its own marketplace ad business.

Instacart Ads

Instacart has been building its ad products for several years. In February 2022, it introduced auction-based display ads and free shoppable brand pages in Instacart Ads Manager, its self-serve portal. For the fourth quarter of 2023, Instacart reported advertising revenue of $243 million, up 7% year over year, alongside gross transaction value of $7.89 billion; that is the most recent quarterly advertising figure PPC Land has reported for the company, and today's release contains none.

In March 2024, Instacart received Media Rating Council accreditation for impression, click and viewability measurement across Sponsored Product, Display, Shoppable Display and Shoppable Video formats, and said it worked with more than 5,500 consumer packaged goods brands. Its data has also been sold off the platform. PubMatic began offering Instacart's first-party retail data for connected TV buying in April 2024, with Mars among the first brands, and in October 2024 Roku added shoppable ads that put products straight into Instacart carts, reporting that on average 52% of streamers who bought an advertised product through Instacart were new to the brand.

The company has also argued its case on measurement. In April 2026, an Instacart measurement scientist co-authored an IAB paper contending that marketing mix modelling undervalues retail media, which noted that Instacart connects more than 2,200 retail banners on its marketplace and powers more than 310 grocery ecommerce sites. The paper's central claim is that closed-loop measurement, where the platform that shows the ad also records the sale, should take precedence over models built for media that cannot see purchases.

DoorDash Ads

DoorDash came to grocery advertising from restaurants and has used partners to widen its reach. In October 2025, Criteo agreed to act as an extension of DoorDash's US ad sales team for grocery, convenience and other non-restaurant retailers and the consumer packaged goods brands that sell through them. By June 4, 2026, DoorDash said its ad business served more than 400,000 advertisers across DoorDash, Wolt and Deliveroo, reported that first-time customers made up more than 36% of sales for consumer goods brands using its Spotlight homepage placement, and said media spend through Symbiosys, the offsite advertising firm it bought in 2025, had nearly doubled since the acquisition. Later that month, CommerceIQ connected to the DoorDash Ads API for the more than 2,200 brands on its platform.

DoorDash has not published a figure for its advertising revenue in any of those announcements, and today's release does not add one.

Where they meet

Put side by side, the two businesses sell much the same thing to many of the same buyers. Both offer sponsored product placements and display formats to consumer goods brands. Both sell offsite reach built on their own purchase data. Both pitch closed-loop sales measurement. A cereal maker or a soft drink company buying both today would, after closing, be negotiating with one owner.

What the release leaves open is how the two would fit together. It does not say whether Instacart Ads and DoorDash Ads would be merged into one platform or kept apart, whether shopper data would be combined across the apps for targeting or measurement, whether Instacart's accreditation would extend to DoorDash inventory, or how pricing would be set. The commitment to keep "Instacart's brand, enterprise technology products, and app" does not mention advertising by name.

The phrase "a scaled alternative" also raises a question the release does not answer: an alternative to what? The surrounding text suggests the largest retailers' own ad networks. For a commerce media market in which Amazon and Walmart set the benchmarks, a combined DoorDash and Instacart offer would be a larger third option for grocery brands. It would also remove one of the existing independent options.

Commitments to grocers, Shoppers and members

DoorDash lists three benefits it expects from the deal:

  • More choice for consumers: Instacart customers could shop at more than 50,000 additional stores, on top of the nearly 100,000 already on Instacart. By PPC Land's arithmetic, that would put roughly 150,000 stores within reach of Instacart customers.
  • Two memberships for the price of one: DashPass and Instacart+ members would pay one membership fee instead of two, which DoorDash estimates would save them about $100 million a year in fees alone. The release gives neither the number of members holding both subscriptions nor the price of the combined membership.
  • More ways to earn for Dashers and Shoppers: grocery orders on quiet days, restaurant orders at peak times, or both.

It also lists two post-close commitments. Under Open Platform, No Grocery Exclusivity, "Local grocers can work with any delivery platform they choose to help them grow." Under Shoppers Keep What They Love, Instacart's Shoppers keep "the flexibility to choose how much they work and the information they need to decide which batches to accept," and can choose whether to take DoorDash orders or keep shopping only on Instacart.

The release calls these "a few of the post-close commitments it is making today," which implies there are more. It does not say whether any are legally binding, how long they would last, or whether they would be offered to regulators as formal conditions. Both pledges deal with how a combined platform would treat the parties that depend on it, grocers and Shoppers, and by announcing them on day one DoorDash has put them on the record before any review begins.

Regulators and timing

The closing conditions are the approval of Instacart stockholders, the expiration or termination of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, "other regulatory approvals, including in Canada and Israel," and other customary conditions. The forward-looking statements specify the Competition Act in Canada and the Israeli Economic Competition Law-1988. The release does not explain why Israeli clearance is needed.

The timetable is long. From today, the end of 2027 is about 14 months away and the end of June 2028 about 20 months, by PPC Land's count. The forward-looking statements list the risk that approvals "may result in the imposition of conditions that could adversely affect the combined company or the expected benefits."

The announcement lands one day after a separate federal action involving both companies. On October 28, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission ordered nine companies, including DoorDash and Instacart, to provide information on whether their prices and compensation vary from person to person, according to the FTC. The other recipients were Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, Target and Walmart. The orders, approved by a 2-0 vote, give recipients 45 days from receipt to respond and ask food delivery and ride-sharing companies to document the inputs, tools and procedures they use to set pay and prices. That inquiry is a study rather than an enforcement action, and the merger release does not mention it.

Instacart has dealt with the FTC before. In December 2025, it agreed to a $60 million settlement over allegations including advertising free delivery on first orders while charging mandatory service fees of up to 15%, a satisfaction guarantee that often yielded only small credits, and sign-up practices for its Instacart+ membership. The same PPC Land report noted a separate FTC inquiry into Eversight, the pricing tool Instacart bought in 2022, after a study found shoppers seeing different prices for identical items at the same stores; Instacart said retailers set prices and its tests do not use personal data. Instacart+ is one of the two memberships the deal proposes to merge.

Why it matters for marketers

The deal touches three groups in the advertising market at once. For consumer goods brands, two of the platforms where they buy grocery search and display ads would come under one owner, with all the consequences that has for pricing, measurement and negotiation, none of which the release addresses. For grocers, the company that runs their own ecommerce sites and ad networks would be owned by the operator of a marketplace that also sells to their shoppers, though the release stresses that "the store makes the sale" on either app. For agencies and technology intermediaries such as Criteo and CommerceIQ, which have built integrations into DoorDash, the question is whether those connections would extend to Instacart inventory or be replaced.

Instacart's argument for closed-loop measurement, set out in the IAB paper, becomes a different proposition if the loop spans restaurant meals, convenience orders and the weekly shop. A brand could, in principle, see a far wider slice of a household's food spending in one place. Whether it will is a matter for the integration plan and, before that, for regulators.

The companies operate separately until closing, so nothing in the ad products changes now. The long window to the end of 2027 or the first half of 2028 means brands will plan at least one full annual budget cycle with the two platforms still independent, and possibly two.

Timeline

Summary

Who: DoorDash, Inc. (NASDAQ: DASH), led by co-founder and CEO Tony Xu, and Maplebear Inc., which operates as Instacart (NASDAQ: CART), led by CEO Chris Rogers. Centerview Partners and J.P. Morgan Securities advise DoorDash; Goldman Sachs advises Instacart.

What: A definitive agreement for DoorDash to acquire Instacart for $65.00 per share, an equity value of approximately $17 billion, with at least 75% paid in cash and DoorDash stock capped at 25%. DoorDash plans to keep Instacart's brand, app and enterprise technology, and to offer grocers both companies' delivery, fulfillment, advertising and AI tools, including the technology grocers use to run their own websites and retail media networks.

When: Announced today, October 29, 2026. The price is a 26% premium to Instacart's October 22 close. Closing is expected at the end of 2027 or in the first half of 2028.

Where: The announcement carries a San Francisco dateline. Regulatory approval is needed in the United States under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, and in Canada and Israel. Instacart works with nearly 100,000 stores; DoorDash operates in more than 40 countries.

Why: The companies argue that local grocers cannot match the delivery fleets, memberships, warehouses and AI shopping assistants of the largest retailers on their own. For the marketing community, the deal would bring two retail media sellers, and the technology behind many grocers' own ad networks, under one owner, while leaving unanswered how the ad platforms and their data would be combined.