DoorDash

In January 2013, Stanford University students Tony Xu, Stanley Tang, Andy Fang and Evan Moore launched PaloAltoDelivery.com in Palo Alto, California. In the summer of 2013, it received US$120,000 in seed money from Y Combinator in exchange for a 7% stake. It incorporated as DoorDash in June 2013.

DoorDash's first partnership with a fast food burger restaurant chain was in April 2016, when it partnered with CKE Restaurants, parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, for food delivery.

In December 2017, DoorDash announced its partnership with Wendy's for delivery from its restaurants.

In December 2018, DoorDash overtook Uber Eats to hold the second position in total US food delivery sales, behind GrubHub. By March 2019, it had exceeded GrubHub in total sales, at 27.6% of the on-demand delivery market. By early 2019, DoorDash was the largest food delivery provider in the U.S., as measured by consumer spending.

In October 2019, DoorDash opened its first ghost kitchen, DoorDash Kitchen, in Redwood City, California, with four restaurants operating at the location.

By June 2020, DoorDash had raised more than $2.5 billion over several financing rounds from investors including Y Combinator, Charles River Ventures, SV Angel, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, SoftBank Group, GIC, and Kleiner Perkins. DoorDash announced a partnership with KFC in September 2020, followed by Taco Bell in October 2020.

In November 2020, DoorDash announced the opening of its first physical restaurant location, partnering up with Bay Area restaurant Burma Bites to offer delivery and pick-up orders. In December 2020, it became a public company via an initial public offering, raising $3.37 billion. In November 2021, DoorDash acquired Finland's Wolt for €7bn.

In August 2022, DoorDash announced it would end its partnership with Walmart in September, ending the companies' cooperation agreement from 2018. In November 2022, DoorDash announced plans to lay off 1,250 corporate employees, or about six percent of its workforce, to rein in expenses.

DoorDash began expanding into international markets in 2015, launching in Toronto, Canada. The company started operating in markets outside North America in 2019, officially launching in Melbourne, Australia, in September and later expanding further into the country. In 2021, the company expanded its service area to Sendai, Japan in June and Stuttgart, Germany, in November. In June 2022, the company expanded into the Wellington Region of New Zealand.

The company expanded its service offerings in 2020, adding grocery delivery initially in California and the Midwest in August 2020. DoorDash expanded the service offerings in 2021 to include DoubleDash, which allows for orders from multiple merchants, and alcohol delivery in 20 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and Australia.

In August 2019, the company acquired Scotty Labs, a tele-operations startup company that focuses on self-driving and remote-controlled vehicle technology. In October 2019, DoorDash acquired Caviar, a service specializing in food delivery from upscale urban-area restaurants that typically do not offer delivery, from Square, Inc. for $410 million. On February 8, 2021, DoorDash announced its acquisition of Chowbotics, a robotics company known for its salad-making robot. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal, but Chowbotics was valued at $46 million in 2018. On November 9, 2021, DoorDash announced its acquisition of the Finnish technology company Wolt for over $8.1 billion. In March 2022, DoorDash announced its acquisition of Bbot, startup that developed digital ordering and payment solutions for restaurants and hospitality venues.

In April 2025, the company made an initial offer to acquire Deliveroo, a UK-based food delivery company, for £2.7 billion($3.6 billion). In May 2025, DoorDash announced it had acquired Deliveroo for $3.9 billion. In May 2025, DoorDash announced the $1.2 billion all-cash acquisition of restaurant booking platform SevenRooms.

Lawsuits against DoorDash

2017 class-action lawsuit for misclassifying workers

In 2017, a class-action lawsuit was filed against DoorDash for allegedly misclassifying delivery drivers in California and Massachusetts as independent contractors. In 2022, a tentative settlement was reached in which DoorDash would pay $100 million total, with $61 million going to over 900,000 drivers, paying out just over $130 per driver, and $28 million for the lawyers. Gizmodo criticized the settlement, noting that the $413 million that DoorDash CEO Tony Xu received the previous year was one of the largest CEO compensation packages of all time.

2019 data breach lawsuit

On May 4, 2019, DoorDash confirmed 4.9 million customers, delivery workers and merchants had sensitive information stolen via a data breach. Those who joined the platform after April 5, 2018, were unaffected by the breach. A class-action lawsuit for the breach was filed against DoorDash in October 2019.

Withholding of tips and subsequent class-action lawsuits

In July 2019, the company's tipping policy was criticized by The New York Times, and later The Verge and Vox and Gothamist. Drivers receive a guaranteed minimum per order that is paid by DoorDash by default. When a customer added a tip, instead of going directly to the driver, it first went to the company to cover the guaranteed minimum. Drivers then only directly received the part of the tip that exceeded the guaranteed minimum per order.

In January 2020, it was reported that DoorDash had lied about skimming tips from its drivers, causing them to earn an average of $1.45 an hour after expenses, and that after the company had allegedly overhauled its tipping system, DoorDash was still manipulating per-delivery payouts at the expense of drivers.

A DoorDash customer filed a class action lawsuit against the company for its "materially false and misleading" tipping policy. The case was referred to arbitration in August 2020. Under pressure, the company revised its policy. The company settled a lawsuit with District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine for $2.5 million, with funds going to deliverers, the government, and to charity.

2021 driver strike for tip transparency

In July 2021, DoorDash drivers went on strike to protest lack of tip transparency and to ask for higher pay. At the time of the strike, and, as of June 2022, DoorDash did not allow drivers to see the full tip amounts prior to accepting a delivery in the app. If customers tip over a set amount for the order total, Doordash hides a portion of the tip until the delivery is complete. The strike occurred after DoorDash rewrote its code to cut off access to Para, a third-party app that drivers had been using to see the full tip amounts.