Emailed on June 12th 2020 in The Friday Forward

Instacart said on Thursday that it raised $225 million from investors, bumping the company’s valuation significantly up to $13.7 billion from $8 billion in 2018 when it raised its previous round. DST Global and General Catalyst led the round, and existing investor D1 Capital Partners participated.

At $13.7 billion, Instacart’s valuation edges slightly above the price Amazon paid for Whole Foods in 2017: $13.4 billion. At the time, investors hailed the deal as not only a way for Amazon to establish a more solid brick-and-mortar presence, but also as a way for the company to deepen its grocery-delivery offering. It cued panic among traditional grocery investors.

Fears of Amazon’s dominance in grocery delivery fizzled out. Instead, it appeared, at least in 2019, that Walmart Grocery was pulling ahead of the pack.

And now amid the coronavirus, Instacart has pulled an upset—becoming the dominant player, at least based on credit-card data, in the space.

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