Can a DoorDash-Instacart fusion stand up to Amazon and Walmart?

On 29 October DoorDash said it would buy Instacart for $17bn and expects the merger eventually to yield $500m of extra annual profit as the firms fuse their software systems and advertising arms. Sensor Tower estimates that downloads of standalone delivery apps in America and Canada are down by a fifth so far in 2026 from a year earlier. Online sales now account for a fifth of Americans’ grocery spending, according to Brick Meets Click, and have grown by more than 20% year on year for eight quarters, but Wedbush reckons Amazon and Walmart together have 55% of US online-grocery sales. The boom, the paper says, has benefited retail behemoths more than gig-economy disrupters, squeezing Instacart, DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub, which have had to rely more on paid referrals and ads. The deal continues a wider consolidation: last year DoorDash bought Britain’s Deliveroo as Prosus bought Just Eat Takeaway; Uber is poised to buy Berlin-based Delivery Hero and had considered Instacart at least twice. DoorDash’s market value of $73bn is more than five times Instacart’s. The article says the purchase helps DoorDash move further into groceries, which need more complex in-store software than restaurant delivery, and to combine Instacart’s high-margin ad business with its own. Even so, the merger is not sure to go through: “affordability” is politically hot after the midterms, and last month the FTC requested information from DoorDash, Instacart, Uber and Walmart on their use of personalised pricing. The companies argue that greater scale will mean lower costs and cheaper groceries and will help corner shops; DoorDash has launched a “Shop Local Together” site. The Economist’s conclusion is that a combined DoorDash and Instacart should outmatch its gig-economy peers, but that standing up to the world’s biggest retailers is far from guaranteed.