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DoorDash says its new fee structure will "better reflect what it takes to complete your delivery." Bloomberg/Getty Images The fees on your next DoorDash order could change depending on the size of your order or how far your delivery worker has to travel.

DoorDash is overhauling the way it charges customer fees, the company said on Thursday. It plans to roll out the new fee structure across most of the US over the coming months.

Under the new system, the service fee customers pay can vary more, depending on factors such as the size of an order and the distance to the store or restaurant. Orders that require trips of more than 10 miles may still incur a separate long-distance fee.

DoorDash's delivery fee, meanwhile, will remain a fixed charge that varies by merchant, the company said.

The changes "better reflect what it takes to complete your delivery," DoorDash wrote in a blog post describing the new fee structure.

The new fee structure is the latest change to the DoorDash app. Last month, the delivery service unveiled an AI tool that lets users order groceries by uploading a shopping list or a recipe.

Gig workers for apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats often decide which orders to take based on factors such as how far they need to travel to deliver them. That calculation has become more important as gas prices have soared this year after the US and Israel began a war with Iran.

About 70% of recent DoorDash orders would have carried lower fees under the new system, the company said. A DoorDash spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on the fee structure.

DoorDash is also adding app features that it said make its fees more transparent to customers. A new "Farther Away" label will appear on orders from restaurants that could incur higher service fees, for example.

The rollout will initially exclude California, Chicago, Colorado, Washington, DC, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Seattle, DoorDash said.

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Alex Bitter You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Alex Bitter is a senior retail reporter covering the gig economy, food, and retail. His work focuses major gig delivery and ride-hailing apps, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart's Spark. He is interested in everything from what it's like to work on the apps to the companies' business strategies.Some of his recent stories feature gig workers who have been deactivated on the apps, DoorDash hiring traditional employees to make deliveries, gig workers' use of bots, and gig work expanding into new professions, such as nursing.Alex has also written about Aldi's US expansion, Starbucks' turnaround efforts, and the fallout from Kraft-Heinz's budget cutting. Convenience store chain Sheetz ended its "smile policy" after his reporting.Before joining Insider in September 2020, he wrote about consumer and retail companies for S&P Global Market Intelligence. He's a graduate of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and grew up on the Big Island.Alex lives in the Washington, DC, area, where you can find him studying ancient coins or searching for Civil War artifacts with his metal detector in his free time.Got a tip? Reach out at [email protected] or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (808) 854-4501.

Delivery

By PYMNTS  |  July 22, 2026

 | 

DoorDash’s banking product for delivery drivers, DoorDash Crimson, now includes instant deposits powered by Astra’s Payment Cloud.

With this capability, DoorDash delivery drivers can use Visa Direct and Mastercard Send to add funds from external accounts in real time, Astra said in a Wednesday (July 22) press release.

Astra’s Payment Cloud is a vertically integrated platform that powers real-time money movement for businesses through a single application programming interface (API), according to the release.

The integration of this payments infrastructure into DoorDash Crimson includes payment execution, workflow automation, optimized card authorization, embedded risk controls and automated treasury functionality, per the release.

“We chose Astra because their platform architecture combines instant payments with automated treasury capabilities in a single system,” Nancy Yang, director, strategy and operations at DoorDash, said in the release. “The ease of integration and consistent performance gave us confidence we could support DoorDash Crimson at scale.”

Astra CEO Gil Akos said in the release that Astra’s payments infrastructure delivers the reliability and speed required by companies like DoorDash that process millions of transfers.

“We built the Payments Cloud to provide infrastructure that makes real-time money movement dependable and straightforward for teams building modern financial products,” Akos said.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Banking Both Sides: Instant Payouts Turn Receivers Into Customers” found that instant deposit has become something workers actively shop for when they are picking gig platforms and employers.

Thirty-one percent of gig workers said it is urgent that they receive disbursements instantly, according to the report.

Gig, creator and marketplace platforms are the most aggressive adopters of instant payouts in absolute terms, with nearly one-third of senders offering instant payouts always or most of the time, per the report.

“The disbursement market is moving to instant with or without any individual bank’s participation,” the report said. “Recipient demand is real, sender response is accelerating and the rails are in place.”

Astra announced in a February blog post that it secured a $10 million strategic investment from Nyca Partners to scale the Payments Cloud.

“Instant capabilities are no longer nice-to-have,” Akos said in the post. “Velocity creates value and enabling real-time payments is the difference between winning and losing customers.”

Posted by Defense World Staff on Jul 21st, 2026

Amova Asset Management Americas Inc. increased its holdings in shares of DoorDash, Inc. (NASDAQ:DASH – Free Report) by 6.7% during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 252,253 shares of the company’s stock after acquiring an additional 15,929 shares during the quarter. Amova Asset Management Americas Inc. owned approximately 0.06% of DoorDash worth $37,861,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other large investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the business. CYBER HORNET ETFs LLC boosted its position in DoorDash by 6.5% during the 4th quarter. CYBER HORNET ETFs LLC now owns 979 shares of the company’s stock valued at $222,000 after purchasing an additional 60 shares during the period. Vise Technologies Inc. grew its position in shares of DoorDash by 1.8% during the fourth quarter. Vise Technologies Inc. now owns 3,517 shares of the company’s stock worth $796,000 after acquiring an additional 63 shares during the last quarter. MassMutual Private Wealth & Trust FSB grew its position in shares of DoorDash by 7.0% during the fourth quarter. MassMutual Private Wealth & Trust FSB now owns 982 shares of the company’s stock worth $222,000 after acquiring an additional 64 shares during the last quarter. Sunbelt Securities Inc. increased its holdings in shares of DoorDash by 124.1% in the 3rd quarter. Sunbelt Securities Inc. now owns 121 shares of the company’s stock worth $33,000 after acquiring an additional 67 shares during the period. Finally, AXS Investments LLC increased its holdings in shares of DoorDash by 1.3% in the 4th quarter. AXS Investments LLC now owns 5,438 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,232,000 after acquiring an additional 69 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 90.64% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several analysts recently weighed in on DASH shares. Wedbush began coverage on shares of DoorDash in a research report on Thursday, July 16th. They issued a “neutral” rating and a $205.00 price objective on the stock. Jefferies Financial Group raised their price target on shares of DoorDash from $220.00 to $225.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 14th. UBS Group lifted their price target on DoorDash from $206.00 to $214.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, May 7th. Susquehanna decreased their price objective on DoorDash from $250.00 to $225.00 and set a “positive” rating for the company in a report on Friday, May 8th. Finally, Needham & Company LLC restated a “buy” rating and issued a $265.00 target price on shares of DoorDash in a research report on Thursday, May 7th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-four have assigned a Buy rating and ten have assigned a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $252.89.

View Our Latest Analysis on DASH

Insider Transactions at DoorDash In other news, Director Andy Fang sold 5,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, June 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $180.00, for a total transaction of $900,000.00. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CFO Ravi Inukonda sold 19,095 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, July 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $188.04, for a total value of $3,590,623.80. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 252,443 shares in the company, valued at approximately $47,469,381.72. This trade represents a 7.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last ninety days, insiders have sold 74,927 shares of company stock valued at $13,241,532. Corporate insiders own 5.83% of the company’s stock.

DoorDash Stock Up 2.7% DASH stock opened at $189.02 on Tuesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.27, a current ratio of 1.43 and a quick ratio of 1.43. The firm has a market capitalization of $82.36 billion, a P/E ratio of 90.01 and a beta of 1.78. DoorDash, Inc. has a 52-week low of $143.30 and a 52-week high of $285.50. The company’s 50 day simple moving average is $170.39 and its 200-day simple moving average is $177.02.

DoorDash (NASDAQ:DASH – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, May 6th. The company reported $0.42 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.36 by $0.06. The firm had revenue of $4.04 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.15 billion. DoorDash had a net margin of 6.29% and a return on equity of 9.58%. The company’s revenue was up 33.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $0.44 EPS. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that DoorDash, Inc. will post 2.39 EPS for the current year.

DoorDash Profile (Free Report)

DoorDash, Inc operates a technology-driven logistics and food-delivery marketplace that connects consumers, merchants and independent delivery contractors. The company’s core service enables customers to order from local restaurants and retailers through its app and website while DoorDash handles last-mile fulfillment via its network of drivers, known as “Dashers.” Over time the platform has broadened beyond restaurant deliveries to include groceries, convenience items and retail deliveries, positioning DoorDash as a broader on-demand logistics provider for consumer goods.

In addition to its marketplace, DoorDash offers a suite of products and services for consumers and businesses.

Further Reading Five stocks we like better than DoorDash The Ugliest Stocks in the Market Just Got a Very Expensive Vote of Confidence Is Domino’s Stock Serving Up a Buying Opportunity? A $1T Black Hole: SpaceX Eyes Pentagon AI to Break Free Why Gold Miners Could Be the Market’s Biggest Comeback Story

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Sudo make me a sandwich. The future has arrived! DoorDash just introduced a limited beta of DoorDash CLI, a command-line tool for developers that lets you order DoorDash directly from your AI agent. The tool can be used to search stores, find deals, and check out, the company says.

Today we're opening up the DoorDash CLI in limited beta.

`dd-cli` lets you order DoorDash directly from your agent: search stores, find the best deals, check out, and more.

Early access for US/Canadian macOS developers by waitlist. Excited to see what folks build! pic.twitter.com/rSFhjJnvjJ

— Andy Fang (@andyfang) July 15, 2026 Called “dd-cli,” the new tool is open to U.S. and Canadian macOS developers via a waitlist, said DoorDash co-founder and CTO Andy Fang in a post on X. DoorDash was asked for comment about the new feature.

The announcement is getting a lot of attention because, on the face of it, it’s rather funny. Command-line tools are associated with programming, not ordering lunch. An AI agent running commands to order your salad or sandwich can initially feel somewhat absurd.

But the DoorDash CLI isn’t actually a joke; it’s an example of what agentic commerce can look like.

With this move, the company is exposing DoorDash’s ordering platform to AI agents, allowing developers to add functionality to their own software and services. That means instead of visiting DoorDash’s app, developers could build their own tools for ordering food, groceries, or finding local lunch deals, among other things, or use those capabilities as building blocks that are combined with other tools.

DoorDash, too, has experimented with offering its service via iMessage and now has its own AI chatbot, “Ask DoorDash” — offering two examples of how agentic commerce can work. It also exposes its service to AI chatbots, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Claude.

The company’s sign-up form for access to the new CLI tool includes a field asking developers what they would build, if allowed into the beta.

The launch has a bit of humor to it, as it recalls that old XKCD comic about programmers automating ridiculous tasks — like making a sandwich. In the comic, a programmer says “make me a sandwich,” and the other person responds, “What? Make it yourself,” so the programmer says “sudo make me a sandwich,” and the other person says “OK.” (It’s programming humor, okay?)

The attached video in the X post leans into the over-engineering angle, as it reads Slack, recalls memories, parses JSON, inspects menu structures, runs Python scripts, recovers from errors, and calculates totals, just to do something as simple as ordering three salads. As the task runs, the interface reads “Flibbertigibbeting,” making the whole thing even funnier.

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Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software.

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Key Takeaways Uber will acquire operations across 50 markets, representing about $42 billion in 2025 gross bookings. UBER expects the deal to boost adjusted EPS at closing and deliver substantial accretion by year three. Uber plans to invest 2 billion euros in Germany and preserve Delivery Hero's Berlin workforce through 2029. In a bid to expand further, Uber Technologies (UBER - Free Report) has entered into a business combination agreement to acquire Delivery Hero. This move is aimed at expanding its mobility and delivery platform to 99 markets with combined pro forma gross bookings of $236 billion in 2025.

Under the voluntary takeover offer, Uber will pay €41.50 per Delivery Hero share, valuing the latter at approximately $14.8 billion, or $13.7 billion after adjusting for the former's existing stake. Before the offer, Uber owned about 24.77% of Delivery Hero's voting shares and had an additional 11.74% economic exposure through equity derivatives. Prosus has agreed to tender its roughly 17% stake, raising Uber's total economic interest to about 53%.

As part of the transaction, SSW Partners, a New York-based investment firm, will acquire Delivery Hero's operations in 14 markets where the business overlaps with Uber Eats is more significant. The transaction, valued at about $1.6 billion, will allow SSW to independently identify long-term strategic owners for those businesses, while Uber will acquire Delivery Hero's operations across 50 markets, representing approximately $42 billion in 2025 gross bookings.

Uber expects the acquisition to strengthen the global technology platform by combining it with Delivery Hero's established local brands, merchant network and delivery capabilities. The combined business is anticipated to enhance consumer choice, improve the Uber One membership proposition and provide merchants with greater demand through Uber's large user base, supported by advertising, promotional and commerce tools. A denser network is also expected to increase order volumes, improve courier utilization and create additional earning opportunities for delivery partners and drivers.

The acquisition would nearly double the number of markets where Uber operates both mobility and delivery services, increasing the total from 34 to 58. According to the company, customers using both services generate roughly three times the gross bookings and profits of single-product users. Uber expects the transaction to be accretive to adjusted earnings per share upon closing and deliver high-single-digit percentage earnings accretion by the third year.

Delivery Hero's management and supervisory board support the proposed transaction, describing it as an opportunity to strengthen the competitive position, build on the food delivery and quick commerce businesses, and advance the Everyday App strategy through Uber's global platform.

Uber has also committed to maintaining Delivery Hero's Berlin headquarters and preserving its workforce there through at least 2029. In addition, the company plans to invest €2 billion in Germany over the next five years to expand its local operations, strengthen the corporate workforce and support autonomous vehicle deployments and partnerships with the German automotive industry.

Uber will finance the acquisition using existing cash and new debt through a committed bridge facility of about €14 billion while maintaining its investment-grade credit rating and current capital allocation policy, including share repurchases. The transaction remains subject to shareholder approval, regulatory clearances and other customary conditions and is expected to close in the second half of 2027.

How Uber Stands to GainIf completed, the acquisition would significantly strengthen Uber's competitive position by expanding its presence in fast-growing international markets where Delivery Hero holds leading positions. The deal would accelerate Uber's cross-platform strategy by increasing opportunities to convert delivery customers into mobility users and vice versa, driving higher engagement and revenue per customer.

Greater geographic scale, broader merchant relationships and a larger courier network could also improve operating efficiency, reinforce Uber's leadership in the global delivery market and support long-term earnings growth.

The proposed acquisition supports Uber's ambition to bolster its global food-delivery business as it faces intense competition from the likes of DoorDash (DASH - Free Report) , which continues to pursue rapid international expansion.

Earlier this year, DoorDash and Uber’s rival Lyft (LYFT - Free Report) expanded their partnership into Canada, allowing DashPass members to receive discounts on Lyft rides. The move broadens DashPass from a food delivery subscription into a wider lifestyle membership. Canadian members can access benefits such as discounted rides, airport trip savings and priority pickups after linking their accounts.

The partnership marks the first international rollout of DoorDash and Lyft’s collaboration, building on their U.S. success. Lyft, which operates in Canada’s 10 largest cities, aims to strengthen its market presence while DoorDash enhances customer value beyond food and grocery delivery.

UBER’s Share Price Performance, Valuation and EstimatesShares of UBER have declined in double digits over the past six months. Courtesy of the downbeat performance, UBER’s shares have underperformed the Zacks Internet-Services industry over the same time frame.

6-Month Price ComparisonImage Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, UBER trades at a 12-month forward price-to-sales of 2.36X. UBER is inexpensive compared with its industry.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

See how the Zacks Consensus Estimate for Uber’s earnings has been revised over the past 90 days.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Uber’s Zacks RankUber currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. 

Ecommerce and internet stocks could continue to gain as second quarter earnings season provides greater clarity on profit margins and growth trends, according to Jefferies analysts, who believe valuations across the sector remain attractive despite ongoing concerns about artificial intelligence disrupting online traffic.

The analysts wrote that relative valuations are at multi-year lows and that easing worries over AI-driven disintermediation could continue to support companies with strong earnings potential and room to outperform consensus expectations.

Jefferies also expects upcoming earnings reports to offer investors more visibility into full-year margins after several companies announced increased investment plans earlier this year.

Among ecommerce names, Jefferies maintained a ‘Buy’ rating on Carvana Co. (NYSE:CVNA), though it said its web-scraping analysis suggests retail unit growth slowed to the mid-30% range in the second quarter, slightly below consensus estimates. The firm said that would end the company's streak of nine consecutive quarterly beats if confirmed. It added that Carvana would likely need to sustain unit growth above 30% and restore retail gross profit per unit to more typical seasonal levels for the stock to perform well in the second half of the year.

Jefferies remained cautious on eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY, XETRA:EBA), reiterating an ‘Underperform’ rating as it expects tougher year-over-year comparisons to weigh on gross merchandise volume growth during the second half after temporary tailwinds supported earlier results.

For Etsy Inc (NASDAQ:ETSY, XETRA:3E2), which carries a ‘Hold’ rating, the analysts expect gross merchandise sales growth to accelerate in the second quarter and continue improving through the remainder of the year, supported by recovering web traffic trends.

The firm also downgraded Pattern to ‘Hold’ after the stock's roughly 150% gain year to date. Jefferies said the company's valuation now appears to reflect its growth prospects and potential upside to consensus expectations.

Beyond ecommerce, Jefferies said it is bullish heading into earnings on Airbnb Inc (NASDAQ:ABNB, XETRA:6Z1), Instacart (NASDAQ:CART) and Reddit Inc (NYSE:RDDT), while remaining cautious on Lyft Inc (NASDAQ:LYFT) and Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP).

Within delivery and mobility, the firm expects Uber Technologies Inc (NYSE:UBER, XETRA:UT8)'s mobility bookings growth to remain stable while delivery bookings growth slows modestly. It also said investors will be watching for updates on the company's capital allocation strategy following its recent bid for Delivery Hero (XETRA:DHER, OTCQX:DLVHF). Jefferies expects DoorDash Inc (NYSE:DASH) shares could respond positively if organic gross order value growth remains above 20% and incremental margins stay on track to reach about 5% by the fourth quarter.

In travel, Jefferies said it is constructive on Airbnb because of stronger traffic growth and the potential for higher full-year margin guidance. It also expects Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE, XETRA:E3X1) could ease investor concerns about the second half with a strong quarterly performance and a possible increase to its full-year margin outlook. By contrast, the analysts noted that investors are preparing for a potential bookings guidance reduction from Booking Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:BKNG, XETRA:PCE1) and warned that continued traffic declines at Tripadvisor could weigh on revenue and earnings.

Among advertising and social media companies, Jefferies expects Reddit to deliver another revenue and EBITDA beat, although it said the stock reaction is likely to depend on sequential growth in logged-in daily active users in the United States. The analysts also maintained a positive view on Zillow (NASDAQ:Z) while remaining more cautious on Duolingo Inc (Unlisted (US):DUOL) and Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP).

Hungry Howie's and DoorDash Partner to Create a More Seamless Digital Ordering and Loyalty Experience PR Newswire

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© 5./15 WEST / iStock Unreleased via Getty Images

If you drive for Uber (NYSE:UBER | UBER Price Prediction), deliver for DoorDash (NASDAQ:DASH), or shop for Instacart (NASDAQ:CART), you almost certainly get a 1099-NEC at year-end and no benefits package. That is exactly why the IRS treats you as both the employer and the employee of your own one-person business, and why a Solo 401(k) lets you shovel far more into retirement than any W-2 coworker with a corporate plan. The combined limit for 2026 (verify the current figure at IRS.gov before you fund) is the ceiling almost no rideshare or delivery driver actually uses.

Why Gig Drivers Are Actually Self-Employed Business Owners Uber, Lyft (NASDAQ:LYFT), DoorDash, Instacart, and Grubhub classify drivers as independent contractors. That means no employer 401(k) match, no payroll tax split, and the full 15.3% self-employment tax lands on you. The upside: the IRS lets sole proprietors open a Solo 401(k), a plan built for owner-only businesses with no employees other than a spouse.

The plan has two contribution buckets, and you fill both:

Employee deferral: up to the standard 401(k) elective limit ($23,000 in 2024, indexed higher for 2026; verify the current figure). Employer profit-sharing: roughly 20% of net self-employment earnings, stacked on top of the deferral. Combined, those two buckets are what push the ceiling into the range the headline names. If you are 50 or older, a catch-up contribution goes on top of that.

The Math a Full-Time Rideshare Driver Can Actually Hit You do not need six figures of profit to make this meaningful. Say a full-time driver nets $55,000 after mileage deductions. The employee bucket alone lets that driver defer most of a year’s savings capacity, and the profit-sharing side layers on roughly another 20% of net earnings. Even a part-time weekend driver netting $12,000 can route the entire amount into the employee bucket, because there is no minimum.

Context matters here. The U.S. personal savings rate sat at 3.9% in Q1 2026, down from 6.2% in Q1 2024, and personal consumption absorbed 92.3% of disposable income. Gig income is lumpy on top of that. The Solo 401(k) fits because you can fund it in bursts, not on a payroll schedule, and you have until your tax filing deadline (plus extensions for the employer portion) to make the prior-year contribution.

Roth or Traditional, Your Choice, on Both Sides Most low-cost providers now offer a Roth Solo 401(k). As one financial commentator put it, the solo 401(k) “gives you more of the flexibility of contribution limits significantly beyond what you can do just in a Roth” IRA. Under recent rule changes, employer profit-sharing contributions can also be designated Roth. If you expect higher tax rates later, or you are in a low bracket now because of heavy mileage deductions, the Roth side is worth serious consideration.

SEP-IRA vs. Solo 401(k) The SEP-IRA is simpler and better known, and it is what most CPAs default to for gig workers. But it only has the employer bucket, capped near 20% of net earnings. A driver clearing $40,000 can put far more into a Solo 401(k) than a SEP because the employee deferral bucket does not depend on profit. The SEP also complicates any future backdoor Roth IRA because of pro-rata rules. The Solo 401(k) avoids that trap.

Why Almost Nobody Uses It Awareness: platforms do not tell drivers they qualify. Compare that to W-2 workers, where Vanguard’s plan-weighted 401(k) participation rate hit 85% in 2024, largely because of auto-enrollment. Paperwork friction: you need an EIN and a plan document. Fidelity, Schwab (NYSE:SCHW), and E*TRADE offer no-fee Solo 401(k)s, but you have to open them yourself. Cash flow: average annual household expenditures reached $78,535 in 2024, and median full-time weekly earnings ran $1,235 in Q1 2026. Gig income often lands below that median, so “save it later” wins. Form 5500-EZ: once plan assets exceed $250,000, you owe an annual filing. Skippable at first, but real. The Move Get an EIN from IRS.gov (free, five minutes). Open a Solo 401(k) with a no-fee brokerage. Fund the employee bucket first because it is not profit-limited, then add profit-sharing when you file.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

DASH weekly chart shows retracement to prior resistance zone from March 2024. Source: TradingView 200-Day Moving Average as Key Pivot Zone In addition to resistance near the lower swing high of $191.17, dynamic resistance is also nearby and represented by the 200-day moving average, currently near $198.76 and falling. This means that by the time resistance is again tested, the 200-day average will be more closely aligned with the April high. That will add to its significance as a pivot zone. Therefore, an upside breakout would need to exceed the swing high and the 200-day moving average to be successful.

Support Levels to Watch on Pullbacks Given the potential for an upside breakout and reclaim of the 200-day moving average, traders will be watching for pullbacks as potential opportunities to identify new signs of strength. Potential support from trend structure is indicated near $183.50 and $165.24. The 50-day moving average near $166.21 is key dynamic support and aligns near the lower structure area. There is also the 20-day moving average at $170.92 and rising, where there could be signs of support. Since the 20-day moving average was reclaimed during the current advance, an eventual test of the indicator as support is likely to occur at some point.

If you’d like to know more about technical analysis and how traders use it, please visit our educational area.

The gig economy has matured into a battle for efficiency and scale. Deciding between DoorDash (DASH +1.72%) and Lyft (LYFT +3.64%) requires weighing high-growth delivery dominance against a leaner, ride-sharing specialist.

DoorDash operates a sprawling local commerce platform focusing on food and grocery delivery, while Lyft concentrates on multimodal transportation and ride-hailing services. Both companies have moved past their early-stage losses, yet they offer distinct risk profiles and valuation models for long-term investors looking for exposure to modern logistics and mobility.

The case for DoorDashDoorDash has evolved into a leader in local commerce by connecting merchants, consumers, and delivery drivers. The company serves over 56 million active users through a network that includes restaurants, grocery stores, and pet retailers. Recent acquisitions of Deliveroo and SevenRooms have expanded its global footprint, allowing the platform to manage over 35 million members across its various subscription programs.

In FY 2025, revenue reached approximately $13.7 billion, representing nearly 27.9% growth from the previous year. This growth helped the company achieve a net income of nearly $935.0 million, a major improvement from prior fiscal periods. The company maintains a net margin of roughly 6.8%, reflecting its ability to generate profit as it scales its diverse delivery categories.

As of its December 2025 balance sheet, the debt-to-equity ratio is approximately 0.3x, which compares total debt to shareholder equity. The current ratio stands at roughly 1.4x, indicating the company has sufficient assets to cover its short-term obligations. Free cash flow reached nearly $2.2 billion in FY 2025. Note that stock-based compensation represented roughly 43.2% of operating cash flow, which inflates reported cash generation since SBC is a non-cash expense added back in the cash flow statement.

The case for LyftLyft operates a multimodal platform that facilitates ridesharing, bike sharing, and scooter services across more than 650 cities. The company has focused on premium segments by acquiring TBR, a luxury chauffeuring service, and expanded internationally via the acquisition of Freenow. These moves allow the company to serve nearly 51.3 million annual riders while strengthening its relationships with corporate clients and municipal transit systems.

For FY 2025, the company reported revenue of close to $6.3 billion, which indicates a growth rate of approximately 9.2% over the prior year. More strikingly, the company achieved a net income of approximately $2.8 billion during this period. This resulted in a net margin of nearly 45.0%, suggesting a highly profitable year as the business optimized its rider network and integrated new service tiers.

As of the December 2025 balance sheet, the debt-to-equity ratio is roughly 0.4x, representing the relationship between total debt and equity. The current ratio is approximately 0.6x, which means total liabilities exceed shareholder equity. Free cash flow for FY 2025 was nearly $1.1 billion. Note that stock-based compensation represented roughly 27.6% of operating cash flow, which inflates reported cash generation since SBC is a non-cash expense added back in the cash flow statement.

Risk profile comparisonDoorDash faces intense pressure from competitive consolidation, particularly following Uber Technologies' (UBER +2.44%) move to complete its acquisition of Postmates. The company also faces persistent legal challenges regarding driver classification and regulatory scrutiny of tip transparency and pay practices. Furthermore, while previous merchant listing disputes have been settled, the company remains vulnerable to cybersecurity threats that could compromise sensitive user data.

Lyft is currently facing significant litigation risks related to safety and assault claims, which could result in substantial financial liabilities. The regulatory environment for classifying drivers as independent contractors remains a major uncertainty in key markets such as California and New York. Additionally, the company faces scrutiny over its background-check protocols, as critics argue that existing processes may be inadequate to prevent future driver misconduct.

Valuation comparisonLyft appears more attractively priced based on its lower forward P/E and P/S ratio compared to DoorDash, which commands a higher growth premium.

MetricDoorDashLyftSector BenchmarkForward P/E74.5x24.7x16.7xP/S ratio6.0x0.9xn/aSector benchmark uses the SPDR XLC sector ETF.
Valuation metrics sourced from Financial Modeling Prep (FMP) and may differ from other data providers.

DoorDash dominates the food delivery market and now delivers grocery and retail items. Lyft focuses on ride-sharing. Though they serve different customer needs, both have benefited from the growing demand for app-based services and rely on the gig economy. So, which stock is the better buy in 2026?

DoorDash has established itself as the clear leader in U.S. food delivery, to the point where its name has begun to be used as a verb: “Let’s DoorDash dinner tonight.” It does have competition in that space, though, including Uber Eats and Grubhub. It’s been expanding into the delivery of other retail items, including grocery and convenience store offerings. It has a large customer base, an extensive logistics network, and has consistently delivered strong revenue growth. But that growth is reflected in its high valuation.

Lyft remains much smaller than its main competitor, Uber. It has formed strategic partnerships with airlines, hotels, credit cards, and other companies to offer discounts and credits. Its smaller scale limits its pricing power, which is a competitive disadvantage. But it has consistently generated positive free cash flow. Also, its valuation is much lower than that of many comparable businesses. The impact of self-driving vehicles on the ride-sharing industry remains to be seen.

Between these two companies, I would choose DoorDash. I think its higher valuation is justified, considering its prospects for expansion and long-term growth.

URBAN OUTFITTERS AND DOORDASH CELEBRATE THE CLASS OF 2030 WITH THE ULTIMATE GRADUATION CELEBRATION PR Newswire P

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Amazon‘s (AMZN) Rufus can now buy things for you. OpenAI‘s ChatGPT has a checkout built in. Walmart‘s (WMT) Sparky is moving from recommendations to transactions.

One by one, the biggest companies in the world are crossing the same line: from AI that advises to AI that acts. 

Now Mastercard (MA) has built the road for all of them to drive on. 

This week, the company unveiled Agent Pay for Machines — AP4M — a payments infrastructure platform built not for humans but for AI agents. 

The announcement didn’t exactly break the internet; just a clean product launch describing infrastructure for “automated microtransactions” and “machine-driven transactions that happen continuously in digital commerce.”

It’s a bigger deal than most people might realize — because in the Age of AI, human purchasing behavior doesn’t scale quite as well as what’s coming…

The Purchase Decision Is Getting a Co-Pilot Today, a typical mid-size enterprise manages hundreds of software subscriptions and vendor contracts, with dozens of payment methods, all involving an approval process bogged down by compliance checks and budget codes. 

Consumer commerce isn’t much better. Anyone who has been trapped in a time warp comparing airline seats, luggage fees, loyalty point conversions, and layover times across six browser tabs knows that the human brain was never optimized for this kind of decision-making. 

AI agents are increasingly capable of handling much of that process — evaluating price, quality, delivery time, return policy, and budget availability simultaneously — in a fraction of the time a human would need. The technology isn’t perfect yet. But the direction is clear, and the infrastructure being built around it is being designed for a much more capable generation of agents. 

The problem, until now, has been trust. A bad chatbot recommendation is a mere annoyance. A bad payment agent that routes real money to the wrong vendor, fails to settle a transaction, gets compromised by a fraudster, or blows past a spending limit is a catastrophe. That’s why payments, identity, authorization, fraud prevention, and guaranteed settlement aren’t just features in the agentic world. They’re the entire game.

Mastercard’s AP4M is a bet that it can be the trust layer for this new era. High-frequency, low-latency, low-value machine payments across cards, bank accounts, and stablecoins — with credentialing, spending controls, and settlement built in. 

It’s essentially aiming to be the financial nervous system for the robot economy.

What AI Agents Will Actually Buy — and How Much Volume That Creates The road is built. The question is what drives on it — and how much. 

Consumer agents could shop for groceries, compare insurance plans, book travel, reorder prescriptions, pay utility bills, manage subscriptions, negotiate with service providers, and handle returns — all without requiring anything except a budget and preferences. 

But consumer shopping is just the entry point. The real volume is in business.

We’re talking about industrial AI agents that can:

Procure cloud compute on spot markets in real time Buy data feeds from third-party providers to answer a query Pay API calls to specialized models Bid for inference capacity, settling micropayments to data brokers Manage logistics contracts Reorder inventory when stock dips below a threshold All in the background, at machine speed, without requiring human approval for each individual transaction.

And then there’s agent-to-agent commerce: 

AI models paying other AI models for specialized capabilities An orchestration agent routing a task to a vision model, a code generation model, and a legal review model — and paying each one Micropayment settlement between software systems that used to communicate for free but will increasingly charge for specialized inference The volume of individual transactions in this world is orders of magnitude higher than anything existing payment infrastructure was designed to handle — which is exactly why Mastercard is moving now.

The Agentic Commerce Winners: Who Owns Each Layer of the Stack So where does this leave investors? The agentic commerce stack has clear winners — and they’re not all obvious. 

The Payment Rails: Mastercard and Visa Play Offense Mastercard and Visa (V) are the most direct plays. If AI agents become major economic actors, every transaction they make needs a trusted, regulated rail to run on. Both networks are moving intelligently — AP4M is Mastercard’s opening move, and Visa has its own agent payment initiatives underway. The risk is crypto disintermediation; but their fraud infrastructure, regulatory relationships, and merchant networks are moats that don’t disappear overnight. They’re playing offense, not waiting to be disrupted. 

The Crypto Layer: Where Stablecoins Beat Card Economics For high-frequency, low-value machine payments — an agent paying $0.003 to a data API 60,000 times a day — traditional card economics don’t work. Stablecoins do. Circle‘s USDC is already embedded in developer infrastructure and is dollar-denominated, programmable, and built for exactly this use case. Coinbase (COIN-USD) is the leading regulated on-ramp. Solana (SOL-USD) and XRP (XRP-USD) offer the low-cost, high-speed settlement rails the agentic economy needs. This is a structural advantage. 

The Invisible Infrastructure: Why Cloudflare May Be the Most Important Winner Cloudflare (NET) may be the least obvious but most important winner in this stack. Every AI agent operating on the web needs traffic routing, identity verification, security, and, increasingly, payment hooks. Cloudflare already handles most of that for the human web — and it’s clearly been thinking about the agent version for a while. Its developer tools are already built to let agents discover, authenticate, and pay for network resources on the fly. 

The Frontier AI Labs: Whoever Controls the Default Agent Controls Commerce The frontier AI labs — Alphabet (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Anthropic, Meta (META) — may be the biggest winners of all. Whoever controls the default agent controls what gets bought. If your shopping agent runs on Gemini, Google captures commercial intent before any retailer enters the picture. The agent becomes the new search bar, the new storefront entrance. That’s an enormous amount of economic leverage — and it goes to whoever builds the most trusted, most widely deployed agents. 

Commerce Platforms: Why Being Agent-Friendly Becomes a Competitive Moat Shopify (SHOP), MercadoLibre (MELI), Uber (UBER), DoorDash (DASH) win if they build agent-friendly infrastructure — clean, machine-readable APIs that expose price, availability, delivery time, and product data in structured form. Platforms that make themselves easy for agents to query become preferred vendors by default. Platforms that don’t become invisible. 

The Losers: The $600 Billion Digital Ad Economy Built for Humans, Not Agents The flip side of this thesis is just as important — and more uncomfortable for some. 

A significant chunk of digital commerce today runs on what we might call manufactured friction: 

SEO-content farms that exist to intercept consumer search queries Coupon sites and comparison platforms that monetize human indecision Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands that spend fortunes on Instagram ads and bank on impulse purchases Retailers whose entire competitive strategy is “be first in Google results.” But AI agents won’t get distracted by a banner ad, click on a sponsored result, or respond to influencer marketing. 

They evaluate objective criteria — price, verified quality, delivery reliability, return policy, trust signals — and transact. 

The entire apparatus of attention-based digital marketing, which has been the backbone of the internet economy for two decades, gets significantly disrupted.

Low-moat DTC brands without genuine product differentiation face structural pressure. If an agent can find a functionally equivalent product for 15% less from a vendor with better delivery reliability, that’s what it will buy. Brand loyalty built through social media presence and influencer campaigns is worth considerably less when the purchase decision is made by software.

Legacy retailers with messy, poorly structured data infrastructure are especially vulnerable. The retailers who haven’t built clean, machine-readable APIs won’t get considered at all. 

The Bigger Picture: How Agentic Commerce Rewrites the Rules of the Internet Economy The internet was built for human navigation. Every layer of it — search algorithms, advertising systems, content marketing, social platforms — was designed to capture human attention, direct it toward specific products and services, and monetize the journey. 

The entire $600 billion digital advertising industry exists because humans browse inefficiently — and can be influenced along the way.

When an AI agent can handle purchase decisions autonomously, the economic value gets redistributed away from attention-based intermediaries and toward the infrastructure layers — trust, identity, settlement, agent distribution, and structured data.

This is why Mastercard’s AP4M announcement, easy to dismiss as a niche fintech product launch, is actually a signal about a profound structural shift. 

AI is rewriting the rules of commerce. Mastercard intends to own a piece of the financial future.

It’s rebuilding the payment rails. And all eyes are on the legacy titan as it lays the track.

But nobody’s watching who’s building the station.

Here’s what I mean.

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“Last year I invested in this stock, and I am currently down 30%, patiently waiting on a rebound.” That confession came from a caller on the May 26 episode of Mad Money, asking Jim Cramer whether DoorDash still belonged in his “own it, don’t trade it” bucket.

Cramer’s answer was immediate: “I think DoorDash is a buy.”

Then he diagnosed what he thinks is actually wrong with the stock, and it has very little to do with the company itself.

Cramer’s Diagnosis: A Sector Rotation Story Here is the full Cramer read on DoorDash (NASDAQ:DASH | DASH Price Prediction): “There’s a real group of stocks now. Uber, DoorDash, Reddit, they are going down. People want to own hardware. They don’t want to own those others, they don’t want to own Zscaler. They don’t want to own semiconductors. I mean they want to do so for this one Semi only semi. And that’s what’s hurting DoorDash.”

He repeated the punchline for emphasis: “That’s what they want is semi, not DoorDash.”

I have been watching this rotation play out for months now, and the tape backs Cramer up. DASH is down 32% year to date, with shares at $158.30 after starting the year above $226. Uber (NYSE:UBER) is down 14% YTD. Reddit (NYSE:RDDT) is down 37% YTD. Three platform companies bleeding in unison.

Meanwhile, the Semis Cramer Is Talking About NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) is up 15% YTD and 64% over the past year, riding 85% revenue growth and a Q2 guide of $91 billion. Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) is up 22% YTD and 86% over the past year.

When Jensen Huang calls AI infrastructure “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history,” capital follows. Every dollar chasing that thesis is a dollar not buying food delivery, ride-share, or social. Goldman’s 2026 outlook flagged this directly, noting that semiconductors are seeing continued multiple expansion as opposed to software.

What DoorDash Actually Did Last Quarter The business is still growing fast. In Q1 2026, DoorDash posted revenue of $4.04 billion, up 33% year over year, with Marketplace GOV up 37% to $31.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA up 28% to $754 million. The Deliveroo deal that closed in October contributed $362 million in revenue. Free cash flow came in at $420 million.

The blemishes are real but mostly investment-related. GAAP net income fell 5% while revenue grew a third, and Q2 carries a $50 million Dasher gas relief headwind. Q4 2025 EPS of $0.48 missed the $0.59 consensus kicked off the slide.

The Valuation Question Investors Need to Answer Even after the haircut, DASH trades at a forward P/E of 53 and trailing P/E of 76. Compare that to Uber’s roughly 14x trailing earnings, and you can see why some investors balk at “cheap.” The analyst community still likes it: 36 buy-or-strong-buy ratings versus 10 holds, with an average target of $245.99, well above today’s $158.

Reddit’s own community is wrestling with the same question. The dominant thread on RDDT this week asks whether the recent dip is a great buying opportunity or has more downside. DASH composite sentiment sits at 52.98, neutral, with a 30-day improvement of 10 points.

The Logic Bridge You buy DoorDash here IF you believe Cramer is right that the semiconductor rotation is temporary, that 56 million monthly active users and 35 million members represent a durable platform, and that Deliveroo integration delivers the $200 million in incremental 2026 EBITDA management is guiding to. You avoid it IF you think a 53x forward multiple cannot survive a deeper consumer slowdown, or if you believe the “own hardware, not software” trade has further to run.

The caller asked Cramer whether to keep waiting patiently while down 30%. His answer was that Wall Street’s tunnel vision is what’s testing the patience, while DoorDash’s own execution remains intact. Every company is becoming a tech company or dying, and DoorDash already crossed that bridge. The question is whether the market remembers before the rotation reverses, or after.

The brands’ first international spot, “Deliver Us to Fútbol,” captures the emotion and frenzy that unites fans around the world throughout the tournament

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--DoorDash (NASDAQ: DASH), together with its global portfolio of brands, Deliveroo and Wolt, today unveiled the brands’ first-ever international campaign to spotlight its role as an Official Tournament Supporter of the FIFA World Cup 2026™.

The “Deliver Us To Fútbol” campaign marks a milestone moment for the three brands, bringing them together on an international stage for the first time to celebrate the passion, anticipation, and rituals that define the world’s match. Produced in partnership with GUT Los Angeles and GUT Design, the campaign launches today across TV, BVOD, OOH, paid digital, audio and social channels internationally. It will be brought to life through local activations, partnerships and events across DoorDash in the US and Canada, as well as Deliveroo (UK, France, Italy) and Wolt (Germany, Norway, Finland, Denmark) in their respective regions.

DoorDash will also bring back its seventh Summer of DashPass in the US timed with the international campaign. This work was also developed in collaboration with FIFA World Cup 2026™ sponsors including Michelob Ultra, McDonald’s and Frito-Lay, alongside other FIFA World Cup 2026™ supporters like Casamigos and key DoorDash partners such as Kroger and CVS Pharmacy.

As the Official On-Demand Delivery Supporter and the Official Restaurant Reservations Platform Supporter of the FIFA World Cup 2026™, DoorDash, along with its global portfolio of brands, is here to help when life gets chaotic during the tournament. Between superstitions, nonstop match viewing, and disrupted sleep schedules, it’s easy for things to go off the rails. DoorDash, Deliveroo and Wolt are the ultimate life assistants to fuel the frenzy so fans can focus on what matters most: fútbol.

“Deliver Us to Fútbol” is an ode to the rituals of the game, following the experience of a Dasher during the FIFA World Cup™ and spotlights iconic tournament moments referenced throughout the spot for superfans. The emotional rollercoaster of the tournament inspired the many thoughtful details woven throughout the work, capturing the fervor unique to this quadrennial moment. Whether it’s delivering coffee to stay up for a match, a pen for a once-in-a-lifetime autograph, or a celebratory meal to mark the win, DoorDash, Deliveroo and Wolt have it all to support fans.

Fútbol fans will also spot appearances from FIFA World Cup™ Champion and global fútbol icon, Ricardo Kaká, FIFA Women’s World Cup™ champion, Alex Morgan and international social media superstar, Khaby Lame.

Beyond the screen, DoorDash, Deliveroo and Wolt are bringing the stadium energy straight to fans with epic local watch parties, celebratory fan festivals, and exclusive offers from DoorDash Reservations in the US. The three brands are also giving fans the chance to earn rewards and win match tickets in a number of ways all tournament long.

"The FIFA World Cup™ has a way of taking over daily life. Sleep schedules shift, reservations revolve around kickoff, and fans hold tight to the matchday food rituals that make every match feel personal,” said Gina Igwe, Vice President of Brand, Creative and Consumer Marketing at DoorDash. “This campaign reflects how DoorDash, Deliveroo and Wolt show up in those moments, fueling the fandom and taking care of everything around the match so fans can stay focused on fútbol. It’s a defining moment to bring our three brands together in one international piece of creative, built to resonate across countries, cultures and communities."

“Fútbol has always been about unforgettable moments that fans, teams and players create together, especially during the FIFA World Cup™,” said Kaká. “I know what it’s like to experience the frenzy as both a player and a fan, so I know first hand how all-consuming it is to be fully immersed during the tournament. Partnering with DoorDash means supporting fans with the best assist during the FIFA World Cup™.”

“For me, the FIFA World Cup™ is about connection, whether you’re on the pitch or watching with friends and family,” said Alex Morgan. “DoorDash and DashPass are the ultimate assists for anyone balancing a packed schedule during the summer and getting ready for an even more eventful season with the FIFA World Cup™.”

As excitement builds toward the FIFA World Cup 2026™, DoorDash, Deliveroo and Wolt are proud to play a role in bringing fans closer to the match. Fans should stay tuned for more surprises throughout the tournament.

About DoorDash

DoorDash is one of the world’s leading local commerce platforms, helping businesses grow and connecting consumers with the best of their neighborhoods. Through its global portfolio, including Deliveroo and Wolt, DoorDash serves communities across more than 40 countries, delivering experiences that bring people together—from everyday moments to global celebrations.

The global food delivery market has entered a consolidation phase, a high-stakes endgame where regional players are absorbed by highly capitalized platforms. This structural shift now centers on Berlin-based Delivery Hero OTCMKTS: DLVHF, which has become the focal point of a strategic bidding war between U.S. giants Uber Technologies NYSE: UBER and DoorDash NASDAQ: DASH.

The outcome of this contest will not only determine control over key European and Middle Eastern markets but will also reveal which competitor’s balance sheet is truly optimized for a multi-billion-dollar integration. For investors, the conflict presents a critical question: is financial firepower or strategic precision the key to unlocking long-term value in a rapidly maturing industry?

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Consolidation Crumble: The Last Slice of the PieThe bidding war ignited when Uber initiated an indicative offer of 33 euros (approx. $35.70) per share for Delivery Hero, a valuation the target’s board promptly rejected. As activist investors apply pressure for a figure closer to €40 (approx. $43.28), the negotiations have drawn DoorDash into the fray, creating a complex proxy battle.

Uber Technologies Today

UBER

Uber Technologies

$68.02 -1.54 (-2.21%)

As of 11:54 AM Eastern

This is a fair market value price provided by Massive. Learn more.

52-Week Range$67.19▼

$101.99P/E Ratio16.96

Price Target$104.68

This aggressive maneuvering signals the capitulation of Europe’s fragmented delivery ecosystem. For years, the region was characterized by intense competition and promotional cash burn, making sustained profitability elusive.

Now, the landscape is shifting toward a duopolistic structure dominated by U.S. operators. Previous transactions, such as DoorDash's 2022 acquisition of Wolt, set the precedent for this wave of consolidation. A successful buyout of Delivery Hero would grant the acquirer immense market share and unilateral pricing power across dozens of countries, effectively ending the costly delivery wars. Delivery Hero’s stock price has surged by more than 90% over the last month, reflecting the market’s anticipation of a sweetened offer and the strategic value of its geographic footprint.

Funding the Fight: Who Has the Deeper Pockets?At the heart of this acquisition battle is a stark contrast in financial positioning. Uber appears to hold a decisive advantage, underpinned by robust and growing free cash flow. Uber ended its first quarter of 2026 with $6.1 billion in unrestricted cash and generated an impressive $2.35 billion in operating cash flow during the period.

This formidable financial engine provides Uber with the liquidity to absorb a large acquisition like Delivery Hero without resorting to excessive leverage or shareholder dilution. With a pragmatic trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 18 and $10.05 billion in net income, Uber’s valuation is grounded in tangible profitability.

DoorDash Today

$149.09 -5.50 (-3.56%)

As of 11:54 AM Eastern

This is a fair market value price provided by Massive. Learn more.

52-Week Range$143.30▼

$285.50P/E Ratio71.00

Price Target$256.11

DoorDash, while also a formidable competitor, approaches the deal from a different capital position. DoorDash holds a healthy $4.6 billion in cash, but its war chest was recently bolstered by a $2.75 billion convertible note issuance. While this provides ample capital for a strategic bid, it signals a greater reliance on financing rather than purely organic cash generation.

This distinction is critical for investors assessing post-acquisition risk. DoorDash’s growth-oriented valuation, reflected in its trailing P/E of 75, implies that the market expects flawless execution.

Taking on a massive, debt-financed acquisition could introduce significant integration risks that its current valuation may not fully price in.

The Brussels Blockade: Can a Deal Survive EU Scrutiny?While Uber possesses the financial muscle for a complete takeover, the path is fraught with significant regulatory and operational headwinds, particularly in Europe. The primary obstacle is the EU Platform Work Directive, a sweeping piece of legislation that aims to reclassify gig-economy workers as employees.

Absorbing Delivery Hero’s extensive European courier network would force the acquirer to navigate these complex rules, which threaten to dismantle the asset-light business model that has defined the sector. The potential for mandated benefits, minimum wages, and collective bargaining rights could trigger severe margin compression, turning a strategic asset into a long-term liability.

Furthermore, antitrust scrutiny from the European Commission looms large. Regulators have already demonstrated their hostility toward market consolidation in the sector, previously fining Delivery Hero and Glovo €329 million (approx. $355.8 million) for anticompetitive practices.

A wholesale acquisition of Delivery Hero by a dominant player like Uber would almost certainly invite a protracted and potentially deal-killing investigation. These regulatory hurdles create a complex risk-reward calculus, diminishing the appeal of a straightforward takeover.

Checkmate: Surgical Strike or Total Domination?Given the intense regulatory friction in Europe, DoorDash’s rumored surgical carve-out strategy may represent the more pragmatic and value-accretive approach. Reports suggest DoorDash is primarily targeting Delivery Hero’s highly profitable Middle Eastern division, Talabat, as well as its Turkish assets.

This surgical strike would allow DoorDash to acquire crown-jewel assets with strong unit economics while entirely sidestepping the European regulatory minefield. Such a move would be strategically sound, adding high-growth markets without inheriting the margin risks associated with the EU’s labor reclassification efforts.

For Uber, the all-or-nothing approach presents a higher-risk, higher-reward scenario. A successful, full acquisition would cement its status as the undisputed global leader in delivery logistics. However, the path is narrow, and success depends on Uber’s ability to navigate a hostile regulatory environment.

The market’s temporary cooling in Uber’s stock price, which has seen a 13% year-to-date decline, partly reflects investor concerns about capital allocation and regulatory risks tied to this ambitious bid. Investors tracking the global logistics space may consider the outcome of this bidding war a key indicator of future market structure. Evaluating each company’s balance sheet and strategic approach to regulatory risk appears essential before taking a position in the next phase of consolidation.

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The gig economy has evolved from a collection of experimental startups into a massive global infrastructure. Investors must now decide whether Uber Technologies (UBER 2.20%) or DoorDash (DASH 3.84%) offers better potential.

Uber operates as a global transportation platform, moving people and freight across dozens of countries. DoorDash focuses on local commerce, aiming to become the logistics layer for every neighborhood store. Both companies are now generating positive net income, yet their growth trajectories and valuation multiples differ significantly.

The case for Uber TechnologiesUber operates a massive global logistics network that connects riders with drivers and merchants with consumers. The company generates revenue through three primary segments: Mobility, Delivery, and Freight, serving over 15,000 cities worldwide. Nearly 15% of its mobility gross bookings originate from airport trips, making travel a critical driver of its high-margin business.

In FY 2025, revenue reached nearly $52.0 billion, up approximately 18.3% from the prior year. This top-line expansion supported a net income of close to $10.1 billion, resulting in a net margin of roughly 19.3%. These figures highlight a significant trend toward profitability as the company scales its advertising and membership programs.

As of its December 2025 balance sheet, the debt-to-equity ratio is approximately 0.5x, which compares total debt to shareholder equity. The current ratio is nearly 1.1x, a measure of how well a company can pay its upcoming bills with current assets. For the full year, the business generated free cash flow of close to $9.8 billion, which is the cash remaining after paying for property and equipment. This capital provides flexibility to reinvest in tech stocks that support its platform.

The case for DoorDashDoorDash functions as a local commerce platform that facilitates the delivery of food, groceries, and retail goods to over 56 million monthly active users. The company has successfully expanded its subscription services, boasting more than 35 million members across its DashPass and Wolt+ programs. By positioning itself as a neighborhood logistics partner, it has diversified away from purely restaurant-based delivery.

Revenue reached nearly $13.7 billion during FY 2025, an increase of approximately 27.9% over the previous fiscal year. The company reported a net income of close to $935.0 million, yielding a net margin of roughly 6.8%. While this is lower than its peer, it represents a notable swing into profitability from previous years.

Based on the December 2025 balance sheet, the debt-to-equity ratio is approximately 0.4x. Its current ratio of nearly 1.4x indicates the company has sufficient liquid assets to cover its short-term obligations. Free cash flow, or the cash produced after accounting for capital expenditures, was close to $2.2 billion for the year. Note that stock-based compensation represented roughly 43.2% of operating cash flow, which inflates reported cash generation since SBC is a non-cash expense added back in the cash flow statement.

Risk profile comparisonUber faces risks regarding driver classification as employees, which could fundamentally change its business model and increase costs. Competition remains intense from companies like Lyft (LYFT 1.12%)and Amazon(AMZN 2.19%), while autonomous vehicle development by Alphabet(GOOG +0.95%) (GOOGL +1.11%)or Tesla (TSLA 1.76%)could disrupt its current network. Additionally, the company is highly dependent on demand in major metropolitan areas and airports, making it vulnerable to local regulations or travel downturns.

DoorDash also navigates regulatory scrutiny over how it classifies its delivery workers, with potential reclassifications threatening its fee structure. It competes against deep-pocketed rivals such as Amazon and Uber Technologies, which can use their broader ecosystems to lure customers away. Furthermore, the company relies on Apple and Alphabet's mobile operating systems to reach its massive user base, making it susceptible to changes in app store terms.

Valuation comparisonUber Technologies trades at a lower Forward P/E and P/S ratio. These metrics compare the share price to future earnings estimates and total revenue, respectively.

MetricUber TechnologiesDoorDashSector BenchmarkForward P/E22.7x61.8x38.2xP/S ratio2.9x5.1xSector benchmark uses the SPDR XLK sector ETF.
Valuation metrics sourced from Financial Modeling Prep (FMP) and may differ from other data providers.

Uber and DoorDash have a lot in common. Both built their businesses around the gig economy, connecting consumers with independent workers through mobile apps. But they represent two different investment stories. My instinct is to invest in the company I patronize most often, but that might not be the right approach.

Uber began as a ride-sharing company, the one you’d call for a ride to the airport or a night out with the girls. But it’s become much more. Its people-moving business generates significant cash flow, but its delivery segment, Uber Eats, sets it up as a direct rival to DoorDash. The combination of the two provides diversification and makes Uber more flexible to deal with economic uncertainty.

DoorDash is another household name, known for delivering your takeout dinner. Its revenue growth is impressive, and management is investing in AI and even autonomous delivery. This innovation could shape the future of food delivery, and DoorDash could deliver significant growth. It’s expanded beyond restaurant food and now delivers groceries and other retail goods, but it lacks Uber’s diverse business model.

I’m more likely to be a DoorDash customer than Uber, but I’d be more likely to invest my money in shares of Uber. An investment in DoorDash is a bet on its future innovation and expansion, while Uber is already generating solid revenue. Uber’s diversification and current profitability make it the investment I’d choose in an uncertain market.

© teppakorn tongboonto / Getty Images

Everyone is talking about DoorDash (NASDAQ:DASH | DASH Price Prediction) again because a splashy Deliveroo deal, autonomous delivery hype, and a fresh AI narrative have analysts pounding the table on a stock that traded near $285 last summer. The underlying numbers tell a different story.

The DoorDash story is a textbook case of revenue growth masking a deteriorating business. Yes, Q1 2026 revenue jumped 33% year over year to $4.04 billion, but strip out the $362 million Deliveroo contribution and core growth was closer to 21%. More telling: GAAP net income actually declined 5% year over year on that same top line. Net revenue margin slipped from 13.1% to 12.8%, and adjusted EBITDA margin as a percent of GOV compressed from 2.6% to 2.4%. Operating margin sits at a razor-thin 5.25% while the stock trades at a trailing P/E of 76x.

Then there is the labor problem. DoorDash flagged that Dasher gas relief costs will exceed $50 million in Q2 alone, worker classification risk has not gone away, and 2026 stock-based compensation is guided to $1.3 to $1.4 billion. That is shareholder dilution dressed up as a payroll expense. The market has noticed: DASH is down 29.68% year to date and 22.22% over the past year. EPS missed consensus by 19.12% in Q3 2025 and another 18.51% in Q4. Two strikes, and the swing keeps getting wilder.

Union Pacific (NYSE:UNP) offers something DoorDash will never have: an irreplaceable physical network. Three reasons it screens more favorably for retirement-focused investors.

First, the moat is the asset. Union Pacific operates roughly half of a true U.S. rail duopoly, and the pending $85 billion Norfolk Southern merger would create America’s first transcontinental railroad spanning 43 states. You cannot replicate that track. You cannot venture-capital your way around it. App-based food delivery is fragmented, commoditized, and one regulatory ruling away from a structural cost reset. Rail is the literal backbone of American commerce.

Second, the numbers actually work. Q1 2026 adjusted EPS of $2.93 beat consensus, revenue rose 3.1% to $6.22 billion, and the adjusted operating ratio tightened 80 basis points to 59.9%. Operating margin runs at 40.4%, profit margin at 29.2%, and the P/E is a sane 22x. CEO Jim Vena affirmed mid-single-digit EPS growth for 2026 and a multi-year target of high-single to low-double digit EPS growth through 2027.

Third, capital comes back to you. Union Pacific paid $1.38 per share in its most recent quarter, raised the dividend in 2025 after years of steady hikes, and bought back $2.68 billion of stock in 2025. DoorDash pays no dividend and is busy printing shares to pay its workforce. The contrast is what retirement portfolios are built on.

Freight tied to grain, coal, chemicals, and industrial inputs is essential, while premium burrito delivery sits squarely in the discretionary bucket. With UNP up 15.35% year to date and 306% over the past decade, the market is already voting.

For investors weighing the two, Union Pacific looks like the more durable name to dig into next.

After returning to form last year -- trouncing the market in 2025 after struggling in recent years -- Ark Invest co-founder, CEO, and Chief Investment Officer Cathie Wood is trying to piece together back-to-back years of success. Her aggressive growth exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have had a mixed showing so far. Two of her five ETFs have more than doubled the market's return, but the other three are badly trailing Wall Street's winning ways.

She was particularly busy on Thursday, adding to some of her existing positions. Ark Invest bought shares of Broadcom (AVGO 1.43%), DoorDash (DASH 3.84%), and Coinbase Global (COIN +1.05%). Broadcom tumbled on Thursday. DoorDash and Coinbase ticked higher, but are trading 44% and 64% below their highs, respectively. Let's take a closer look.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Broadcom Broadcom stock hit an all-time high on Wednesday. It was a different story on Thursday, as the provider of semiconductor and tech infrastructure solutions saw its shares plummet 13% after posting poorly received financial results. The drop is historically significant.

The stock's single-day drop of $285.6 billion in market cap is the fourth-largest slide among the market's megacaps over the last six years. Broadcom's latest quarter was decent.

Revenue rose 49% to $22.2 billion for the fiscal second quarter, as the artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor business that made up nearly half of its top-line results soared 143%. The bottom line fared even better, as reported net income rose 88%, climbing 55% on an adjusted basis. It was a modest beat on both ends of the income statement. Guidance was the dagger.

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Broadcom's outlook for the new fiscal third quarter may seem strong at first glance. Broadcom is targeting $29.4 billion in revenue for the current quarter. It's a substantial step up sequentially and a heartier 84% year-over-year jump. It's also actually just ahead of where the market pros were perched, but the stock's monster run heading into the report apparently required an even rosier outlook.

Even after the stock's slide on Thursday, Broadcom stock is still trading 60% higher over the past year. It's an eight-bagger over the last five years. Several analysts would go on to boost their price targets on what is technically a beat-and-raise performance. One Wall Street pro even upgraded the shares on Friday. It was a strong report. Valuation expectations are just being reset on the AI pick-and-shovel play after the performance.

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2. DoorDash It's been a year of indigestion for DoorDash shareholders. Shares of the company behind the leading third-party app for restaurant delivery have been cut nearly in half over the past year. There have been a couple of earnings misses in that time, even as revenue growth accelerated in 2025 after years of deceleration.

DoorDash continues to find new ways to serve up growth. This week, DoorDash announced upgrades to its suite of advertising tools. Last month, DoorDash posted well-received results and revealed a push into restaurant point-of-sale software.

However, rising gas prices and waning consumer confidence heighten the spice profile of the business model's risk. Can it continue to build out its fleet of gig-economy drivers if the situation in Iran worsens and fuel costs rise again? Will folks pay a premium to have food and other merchandise delivered in a softening economy?

Wood apparently thinks that the pessimism is overdone, and she may be on to something here. DoorDash has established itself as a niche leader of a growing industry. Top-line deceleration is expected to return next year, but there are fates far worse than 20% revenue growth next year on widening profitability. When it comes to Ark Invest taking a bigger bite of DoorDash, I'll have what she's having.

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3. Coinbase Coinbase stock has shed nearly two-thirds of its value since peaking last summer. Enthusiasm for Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) has been waning, down 15% over the past week and off by more 40% over the past year. The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies has fallen 20% to $2.1 trillion over the past month.

Coinbase is the leading online trading platform for digital currencies. If crypto prices are sliding, it's going to shrink account values and ultimately soften trading activity. It also faces competition from traditional trading platforms that are making it easier for their customers to trade crypto there, rather than having to seek out Coinbase or one of its smaller rivals.

Revenue has declined 22% and 31% for Coinbase in its two latest quarters. The good news is that analysts see the slide moderating to a 10% year-over-year dip for the quarter that ends later this month. The bad news is that this is a scalable business, and earnings per share for all of 2026 are now expected to plummet more than 70%. Until crypto prices recover, Coinbase will likely remain depressed.

Investors in DoorDash, Inc. (DASH - Free Report) need to pay close attention to the stock based on moves in the options market lately. That is because the June 18, 2026 $95.00 Call had some of the highest implied volatility of all equity options today.

What is Implied Volatility?Implied volatility shows how much movement the market is expecting in the future. Options with high levels of implied volatility suggest that investors in the underlying stocks are expecting a big move in one direction or the other. It could also mean there is an event coming up soon that may cause a big rally or a huge sell-off. However, implied volatility is only one piece of the puzzle when putting together an options trading strategy.

What do the Analysts Think?Clearly, options traders are pricing in a big move for DoorDash shares, but what is the fundamental picture for the company? Currently, DoorDash is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) in the Internet - Services industry that ranks in the Top 47% of our Zacks Industry Rank. Over the last 60 days, four analysts have increased their earnings estimates for the current quarter, while five have dropped their estimates. The net effect has taken our Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current quarter from 53 cents per share to 51 cents in that period.

Given the way analysts feel about DoorDash right now, this huge implied volatility could mean there’s a trade developing. Oftentimes, options traders look for options with high levels of implied volatility to sell premium. This is a strategy many seasoned traders use because it captures decay. At expiration, the hope for these traders is that the underlying stock does not move as much as originally expected.

DoorDash announced on Thursday that it’s launching a new AI chatbot that lets users order food and groceries with text prompts and photos in its latest AI push.

The chatbot, called “Ask DoorDash,” allows users to search the app for what they’re looking for in their own words instead of having to scroll through restaurants and stores to build a cart. You can tell the chatbot what you’re in the mood for, share a recipe link to find the items, or describe the reservation you’re looking for.

“Traditional search works best when you know the exact restaurant or table you’re looking for,” DoorDash wrote in the blog post. “Ask DoorDash is designed for the moments when you don’t.”

Food delivery apps and tech giants are betting that AI can help make shopping more conversational and personalized, as companies race to make AI assistants a standard part of everyday life. In February, Uber Easts launched an AI-powered “Cart Assistant,” while Instacart has rolled out an AI shopping assistant that grocers can offer to their customers.

DoorDash’s app can build your grocery cart based on a photo from a cookbook, a picture of your grocery list, or a recipe. DoorDash will then add all the items and their correct quantities to your cart. It will prompt users to check if they already have staples like sugar and butter, so they don’t buy something they already have.

Image Credits:DoorDash You can also ask the chatbot to reorder your last grocery cart or suggest new items based on your previous orders, DoorDash says.

As for ordering food, you can tell the chatbot that you want a “filling dinner for a family of 4.” The app will then surface restaurants alongside a personalized blurb explaining why it matches your search. You can narrow the results even further with a query like, “Show me kid-friendly vegetarian spots with mild options.”

Once you select a place, you can ask DoorDash to build a cart with suggestions based on your dietary preferences, budget, group size, or past orders.

With Ask DoorDash for Reservations, users can ask the chatbot to find a “table for two downtown for a date-night dinner around 8 PM.” The app will then surface restaurants with availability. You can refine the results further by asking for something a little more intimate.

The chatbot is rolling out on iOS in select regions for restaurant search and grocery shopping, and within DoorDash Reservations. It will reach more users across the U.S. in the coming weeks, the company says.

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Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University.

You can contact or verify outreach from Aisha by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at aisha_malik.01 on Signal.

This morning, pre-market futures are in the green, though slashed from where they were ahead of the latest wholesale inflation report. This follows a deep selloff on Wednesday, where the Nasdaq alone shed -2%. At this hour, the blue-chip Dow is +160 points, the S&P 500 +15 and the Nasdaq +103 points. The small-cal Russell 2000 is +17 points.

PPI Inflation Highest in 3+ Years: +6.5%After yesterday’s retail inflation numbers from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for May demonstrated relatively manageable levels of price gains, this morning’s Producer Price Index (PPI) — the wholesale version of inflation — suggests something decidedly more thorny: +1.1% month over month, +6.5% year over year. These have reached their highest levels since March and November of 2022, respectively.

Revisions to the prior month moved in the right direction, -30 basis points (bps) for both — +1.1% month over month (now matched with the May print) and +5.7% year over year — but these are still significantly above target inflation rates for the previous regime at the Federal Reserve. Headline core PPI — stripping out volatile food and energy prices — came in as expected month over month at +0.4%, 30 bps below the upwardly revised +0.7% from April. This counts as the sole good news in this morning’s report.

Core PPI year over year reached +4.9%, and was revised up half a percentage point to +4.9% the prior month as well. This is important because we know global oil prices have increased since the start of the war on Iran, but stripped out of the core print we’re still looking at bedrock wholesale inflation at its highest level since January of 2023, when these numbers were coming down drastically month over month.

Further parsing these numbers, ex-food, energy and trade adds even more nuance: +0.8% month over month, +5.1% year over year. This illustrates that trade, especially over the past month (-1.1%), was sopping up a decent amount of this inflation. The +0.8% has not been this high since March of 2022 and year over year since October of that year. These are Great Reopening numbers that were largely cured by interest rate increases month after month. We’re in a very different situation today: what will it mean going forward?

One rather unnerving aspect here is when we compare the relatively benign core CPI numbers from yesterday — +0.2% month over month and +2.9% year over year — we can see that producers must have been absorbing a good deal of this inflation. How long can this be expected to last? Energy prices alone rose +10.7%; can energy companies continue to trim their margins to keep inflation under control on the retail side? Will they do so if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for the next month or three? More questions than answers, most certainly.

Jobless Claims Creep Higher: +229K, +1.795MMeanwhile, normal Thursday morning Weekly Jobless Claims are out this morning, coming in warmer on Initial Claims from expectations to +229K, up 4K from an unrevised +225K last week. These are the first levels this high since the +230K reported in subsequent months back in February of this year. We had been as low as +190K in the last week of April. Are higher energy prices moving Americans from a side gig with DoorDash (DASH - Free Report) or Uber (UBER - Free Report) to simply claiming unemployment benefits?

Continuing Claims remained historically low at 1.795 million (anything below 2 million longer-term jobless claims per week demonstrates a coping labor force), but up from the 1.771 million reported last week. These longer-term claims also report a week in arrears, so based on today’s new claims we might expect these numb ers to tick up on the long end, as well.

European Central Bank (ECB) Raises Rates +0.25%The first major central bank to raise interest rates since the onset of the Iran war in late February is the European Central Bank (ECB), and it has done so by a quarter-point, +0.25%. This may have an odd counter-ring to it, especially with so many Americans (including President Trump) looking for a reduction in interest rates, but Zacks Chief Economist John Blank earlier this week that this move is expected to be “insurance,” rather than the start of a big hiking cycle.

“With the memory of 2022's energy crisis still fresh, Frankfurt is keen to not miss the boat this time,” Blank said in his Global Week Ahead article on Monday morning. “Policymakers have a tightrope to walk as they try to hike without exacerbating the growth hit already underway from the crisis. That's why markets reckon the ECB will only hike rates two or three times this year, with the next move most likely in September.”

DoorDash is rated a buy with a 12-month price target of $187.68, reflecting strong growth and undervalued long-term potential. Despite a Q1 revenue miss, DASH delivered 28% YoY adjusted EBITDA growth and robust GOV increases, even excluding Deliveroo. Integration of Deliveroo, tech stack unification, and expansion into grocery, retail, and autonomous delivery offer significant margin and growth upside.