DoorDash CEO Says New Funding Will Go to Expansion
*By Carlo Versano*
DoorDash is on track to end the year with service in 2,000 U.S. cities, well-above its target of 1,600, said CEO and co-founder Tony Xu.
Xu told Cheddar in an interview on Tuesday that he will use his latest round of financing to grow the business without compromising on speed, a priority for any delivery operation. The company announced last week it raised [$250 million](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/doordash-raises-250-mln-latest-221821323.html), valuing the five-year-old start-up at $4 billion.
While the market is surely saturated ー DoorDash competes with UberEats, GrubHub, Delivery.com, and Postmates, among others ー Xu said the runway for growth is long. Only 3 percent of restaurant sales are delivered, he noted, the majority of which come from pizza.
"Outside of pizza, it's a very, very small percentage of sales being delivered," he said.
DoorDash follows the "Uber model" of hiring gig workers who front operational costs such as gas though much of its network in urban areas relies on bike messengers. The company takes a cut of restaurants' meal sales and charges customers delivery fees.
Much like Slack, which [announced](https://cheddar.com/videos/slack-now-worth-over-7-1-billion) a major funding round on Tuesday, DoorDash has been a darling of SoftBank's Vision Fund. The Japanese venture capital vehicle [led a $535 million funding round](https://www.recode.net/2018/3/1/17065928/doordash-softbank-gic-funding) in the delivery company earlier this year, putting its valuation at less than half of what it is now.
The latest capital raise may put pressure on other delivery start-ups. Recode [reported](https://www.recode.net/2018/4/6/17173478/postmates-doordash-merger-restaurant-delivery) in April that DoorDash and Postmates had discussed merging inorder to compete with the likes of Grubhub and Uber.
"What many people don't understand about the space is just how nascent it is," Xu said.
For full interview [click here] ( https://cheddar.com/videos/doordash-plans-massive-expansion-after-250-million-funding-raise).
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
It’s an annual tradition: the Fed’s banking ‘stress test.’ A year after the regional banking crisis, there are good reasons to make sure they’re prepped.
