Food delivery service DoorDash stepped into the coveted “unicorn” club with its latest $535 million funding round, which values it at $1.4 billion.
And CEO Tony Xu wants to make sure the company is “scaling quality as we scale quantity,” Xu told Cheddar.
“We’re going to be growing to every zip code in every city in North America. As a result, we have to make sure that we keep focusing on the basics.”
DoorDash operates in an increasingly competitive space with brands like Seamless, GrubHub, and UberEats all vying for domination.
To stay ahead, Xu says his company focuses on maintaining a variety of merchants.
“It starts with offering the broadest selection and offering at the highest quality [with] a consistent level of service.”
He pointed out that DoorDash serves 90 percent of the top 100 restaurant brands that offer delivery. “That’s more than all our peers combined.”
Going forward, Xu sees DoorDash automating parts of its delivery logistics.
“We’ve been working with autonomous delivery systems for about three years now,” said Xu. “It’s really a very difficult problem because you’re talking about solving the first- and last-10-feet problem. So this is going to take some time before it truly develops.”
Xu also envisions using DoorDash’s technology to get industries beyond restaurants online. “When you can deliver a burrito hot and deliver ice cream that does not melt, you can deliver just about anything.”
But Xu didn’t go into any details of the industries that DoorDash is eyeing next.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/doordash-raises-535-million-in-series-d-funding).
Oracle soars as it cashes in on the AI boom, Plus: Starbucks shares continue to fall under its new CEO, and does anybody actually want a new iPhone Air?
Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
