Grocery-delivery company Instacart announced that it raised $265 million in a funding round that valued the business at $39 billion. This is more than double its valuation after a funding injection five months ago that raised $200 million at a valuation of $17 billion, which represented a doubling in value then.
Instacart’s total funding amount, based on data from Crunchbase, is $2.7 billion raised over 17 funding rounds. This makes it the second-most highly valued private venture-backed company, behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Funds were provided by members of the company’s current investor group: Andreessen Horowitz; Sequoia; D1 Capital Partners; Fidelity and T. Rowe Price.
Instacart has been a major beneficiary of pandemic social distancing. More people have looked into delivery for some or all of their shopping, so Instacart services have been in demand. High unemployment made it easy to recruit shoppers, too. The company provides delivery for 300 different local and national retailers including Albertson’s (NYSE: ACI) and Target (NYSE: TGT). Now that so many people have tried delivery services, they are likely to continue using them when pandemic restrictions ease because of the convenience.
Source: Yahoo Finance
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