There’s a particular kind of adrenaline rush in my line of work on a big news day, even when someone else is doing the news-breaking. I got a good one last week when DoorDash moved up its earnings call, announcing late Wednesday that it would report third-quarter results on Thursday morning. The signal to anyone who covers such events was that the weeklong rumor was true — DoorDash wants to buy Instacart.
Indeed it was! DoorDash plans to spend $17 billion to acquire the online grocery marketplace in a deal that will probably take more than a year to close. It is a big deal, in all senses of the word, mapping to DoorDash’s ambition to become “the leading physical network to help fulfill tasks in the real world.” (That quote is from a press release.)
That wasn’t all we learned. Also: