Uber's $15 billion Delivery Hero deal
The local business of delivering dinner has an insatiable global hunger.
One of the world’s biggest delivery platforms plans to get bigger. Last week, Uber announced plans to acquire Delivery Hero, a delivery platform that operates on four continents.
Uber has not been secretive about its desire to buy Berlin, Germany-based Delivery Hero. After a years-long courtship that included Uber eventually buying up 37 percent of the company’s shares, the companies have come to an acquisition agreement: Uber will pay Delivery Hero shareholders €41.50 per share, a deal valuing the European company at €13 billion or close to $15 billion USD in an acquisition that, once completed, makes Uber the largest food delivery group outside of China1.
It’s the latest move in what’s become a global arms race to expand geographically and win market share in delivery. But, more importantly, Uber’s leaders say restaurant and grocery delivery is critical to the company’s overall growth, core rideshare business included.
“Delivery Hero is a natural extension of the cross-platform strategy we’ve been executing for years,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said last week on a call announcing the proposed transaction.
It’s true. Uber has leaned into the full breadth of its platform to grow, tweaking its product to turn mobility (rideshare) app users into delivery customers and delivery customers into mobility customers. So far, it’s worked. Now, a new global expansion of Uber’s delivery business becomes a spectacular opportunity to convert more of its existing rideshare base to loyal delivery customers and eventually loyalty program subscribers, a program that’s grown to include 50 million people.
“What we’ve demonstrated over and over again is that cross-platform consumers spend 3 to 4x the gross bookings than single platform consumers,” Khosrowshahi said. “This cross-platform work is one of the highest return growth levers that we run on a global basis. There’s very little investment. We’ve already acquired these customers. All we’re doing is cross-selling each other.”
Uber made $961 million from its delivery business in the first three months of the year, a 43 percent increase over the same period in 2025.
That’s a lot, but it could be a lot higher.
Uber’s leadership loves to assert that there’s plenty of room to grow on the path to world delivery domination. (Top competitor DoorDash’s leadership says the same thing.) Khosrowshahi reiterated the sentiment during Uber’s May earnings call, assuring Wall Street that it’s still, “very, very early innings,” for Uber’s rapid delivery expansion outside of cities in the US and abroad. (The delivery business gross bookings also grew in the first quarter, up 23 percent year over year.)
Much of Uber’s growth relies on combining its two biggest businesses, and the company has gotten creative. For example, in Uber’s spring product release, the company announced riders in some cities would soon be able to reserve an Uber Black or Uber Black SUV — the platform’s premium rides offerings — that will arrive with a preordered drink or snack waiting in the vehicle. (I do not hate this.)
Listening to Uber’s execs, it sometimes sounds like restaurant delivery is a means to a happy end for the company’s rideshare business. But linking restaurants and mobility seems to be working both ways for the $145 billion giant.
“We are seeing nearly $15 billion of run rate2 gross bookings for our delivery business coming from our mobility app,” Uber chief financial officer Balaji Krishnamurthy told investors in May, “and 30 percent of our eligible mobility consumers have never even used Uber Eats yet.”
(Then he reminded them, “There’s a lot of headroom here.”)
Today, delivery makes up half of Uber’s gross bookings — and it’s growing faster than mobility, Khosrowshahi said. “When you put these two businesses together, we’re going to be well over $250 billion in gross bookings, which is pretty incredible scale,” he said. Together, Uber and Delivery Hero had over $230 billion in gross bookings last year. Delivery Hero also runs a thriving ads business — ads as a percentage of gross bookings is bigger than Uber’s, Khosrowshahi notes.
Uber believes it can move quickly to technically integrate Delivery Hero and its localized brands, a move Krishnamurthy says gives Uber even more global leverage.
The acquisition is subject to regulatory approval but should close late next year. As part of the deal (and to please German authorities, no doubt), Uber promised to keep Delivery Hero’s Berlin HQ as-is, making no changes to its workforce until “at least” 2029. Uber also promised a hefty €2 billion investment in Germany, including launching autonomous vehicles and partnering with the German auto industry.
“We think we have a clear path to closing,” Khosrowshahi said.
Delivery Hero is the parent company of a number of several other services, including Foodpanda and Glovo. Uber will acquire most of the business but not all — Delivery Hero entered a separate agreement with a New York-based investment firm that will acquire its business in 14 markets, “particularly where Uber Eats and Delivery Hero already overlap.” Uber’s release has the full breakdown.
Uber execs love run rates! A reminder that run rates are a projection, not a promise, but they can be useful in estimating the future success of a growing product.