The story
In January 2013, Stanford University students Tony Xu, Stanley Tang, Andy Fang and Evan Moore launched PaloAltoDelivery.com in Palo Alto, California. In the summer of 2013, it received US$120,000 in seed money from Y Combinator in exchange for a 7% stake. It incorporated as DoorDash in June 2013.
DoorDash's first partnership with a fast food burger restaurant chain was in April 2016, when it partnered with CKE Restaurants, parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, for food delivery.
In December 2017, DoorDash announced its partnership with Wendy's for delivery from its restaurants.
In December 2018, DoorDash overtook Uber Eats to hold the second position in total US food delivery sales, behind GrubHub. By March 2019, it had exceeded GrubHub in total sales, at 27.6% of the on-demand delivery market. By early 2019, DoorDash was the largest food delivery provider in the U.S., as measured by consumer spending.
In October 2019, DoorDash opened its first ghost kitchen, DoorDash Kitchen, in Redwood City, California, with four restaurants operating at the location.
By June 2020, DoorDash had raised more than $2.5 billion over several financing rounds from investors including Y Combinator, Charles River Ventures, SV Angel, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, SoftBank Group, GIC, and Kleiner Perkins. DoorDash announced a partnership with KFC in September 2020, followed by Taco Bell in October 2020.
In November 2020, DoorDash announced the opening of its first physical restaurant location, partnering up with Bay Area restaurant Burma Bites to offer delivery and pick-up orders. In December 2020, it became a public company via an initial public offering, raising $3.37 billion. In November 2021, DoorDash acquired Finland's Wolt for €7bn.
In August 2022, DoorDash announced it would end its partnership with Walmart in September, ending the companies' cooperation agreement from 2018. In November 2022, DoorDash announced plans to lay off 1,250 corporate employees, or about six percent of its workforce, to rein in expenses.
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In June 2023, DoorDash announced it would give its drivers the option of earning an hourly minimum wage instead of being paid per delivery. However, drivers are only paid hourly when on an active delivery.
In September 2023, the company transferred its stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq. On December 18, 2023, DoorDash was added to the Nasdaq-100 index.
In March 2025, DoorDash announced a partnership with Klarna, a Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) service, letting customers schedule small payments over a set period of time. DoorDash received widespread criticism from this decision, including internet mockery, given concerns about the increase of household debt in America.
In 2025, DoorDash acquired the UK-based delivery service Deliveroo for $3.88 billion. The combined company operates in 40 countries and serves 50 million users monthly.
In September 2025, DoorDash and Ace Hardware (the largest hardware cooperative) announced their partnership to offer delivery for home use products from over 4,000 Ace locations.
In June 2026, the NJ Transit Meadowlands Line was renamed to the "Doordash Meadowlands Rail Line" through June 2027, as part of a new partnership with Doordash.
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a record $131.5 million settlement with DoorDash on September 22, 2026, resolving what the city called systematic violations of its delivery worker laws that affected about 260,000 workers. DoorDash said the underpayment was a mistake, and it had also spent $1.4m last year trying to stop Mamdani from being elected.
From Wikipedia’s article on DoorDash, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.9