Uber is eating the competition's lunch.
With its planned $15 billion acquisition of Delivery Hero announced on Thursday, Uber is set to become the largest food delivery company outside China.
Together, Uber and Delivery Hero had $236 billion in pro forma gross bookings in 2025, a measure of order volume. DoorDash, by contrast, had a marketplace gross order value of $102 billion. Meituan, a delivery service in China, said orders on its platform totaled 1.67 trillion yuan ($246.5 billion) for the same year.
Uber and DoorDash have spent the last few years expanding internationally by acquiring local competitors in different countries and launching services under their own brands.
The deal unveiled Thursday would add delivery operations in 50 markets around Africa, Asia, and Europe to Uber. Among the brands that Uber plans to acquire under the deal are foodpanda, which delivers in countries such as Hong Kong and Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia's Hungerstation. Uber was previously Delivery Hero's largest shareholder.
Uber pursued the deal to compete in food delivery, but it also wants to use the acquisition to grow its ride-hailing business, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said.
With the deal, Uber would nearly double the number of markets where it offers both ride-hailing services and food delivery, Khosrowshahi told CNBC on Thursday.
Customers who use both services tend to spend three times as much on Uber as those who use one. "That is our secret sauce," he said.
In the US, Uber has introduced other services to its app, too, including the ability to book hotels through Expedia and the option to have a drink or snack waiting for you in an Uber ride when booked ahead of time.
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Alex Bitter is a senior retail reporter covering the gig economy, food, and retail. His work focuses major gig delivery and ride-hailing apps, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart's Spark. He is interested in everything from what it's like to work on the apps to the companies' business strategies.Some of his recent stories feature gig workers who have been deactivated on the apps, DoorDash hiring traditional employees to make deliveries, gig workers' use of bots, and gig work expanding into new professions, such as nursing.Alex has also written about Aldi's US expansion, Starbucks' turnaround efforts, and the fallout from Kraft-Heinz's budget cutting. Convenience store chain Sheetz ended its "smile policy" after his reporting.Before joining Insider in September 2020, he wrote about consumer and retail companies for S&P Global Market Intelligence. He's a graduate of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and grew up on the Big Island.Alex lives in the Washington, DC, area, where you can find him studying ancient coins or searching for Civil War artifacts with his metal detector in his free time.Got a tip? Reach out at [email protected] or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (808) 854-4501.
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