DoorDash announced yesterday that it has raised $400 million in Series F funding, giving the delivery startup a $7.1 billion valuation. Temasek Holdings and Dragoneer Investment Group co-led the round, which brings the total amount raised by DoorDash to $1.4 billion.
The actual dollar amount raised was less than the $500 million that The Wall Street Journal had reported last week. But what’s $100 million among food delivery startups, which have been raking in the investments. Instacart has raised $1.9 billion while Postmates raised $678 million and has filed to go public.
My colleague, Jenn Marston, provided some context about DoorDash’s fundraise last week, when reports first surfaced, writing:
I expect 2019 to be a year of one company trying to unseat another repeatedly over the next several months as they expand into new territories and test out new technologies that might give them more dominance in the market. (Cue obligatory Game of Thrones metaphor.)
DoorDash is certainly on board with adopting new technologies, and the new funding could very well help the company further develop things like its self-driving car initiative or even something like drone deployment (something Uber has reportedly been dabbling in.) DoorDash last year posted a job listing for someone to help build “10x ideas from the ground up e.g. robotics, drones, next-gen dispatch, ML-chatbots, strategic partnerships, etc.” So drones likely are a part of the future, for DoorDash and probably every other delivery service mentioned in this post.
DoorDash recently became the first third-party delivery service to operate in all 50 states, and the company says its services are now available in 3,300 cities.