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DoorDash used its first-quarter earnings call to reinforce the same competitive argument it made in Q4: the next stage of competition in local commerce will be determined by who can deliver the best end-to-end experience. CEO Tony Xu said customers judge platforms on whether they receive the exact item they ordered.
In Q1, DoorDash’s focus on execution supported marketplace gross order value (GOV) of $31.6 billion, up 37% year over year. DashPass also reached record membership signups, and monthly active users hit an all-time high.
Xu said DoorDash has spent six years building detailed data about the physical world—covering stores, products, and items across tens of millions of locations per city—and that this information cannot be scraped or found in a digital repository outside of DoorDash.
He added that the company’s goal is not only to win on discovery but to ensure the end-to-end experience matches what customers expect. “What is the point of having the best discovery experience if we can’t bring you that exact item?” Xu said.
Xu pointed to Google Food Ordering as an example. He said it drove significant traffic to delivery platforms for eight years before shutting down, but the retention of that traffic was “a fraction” of what DoorDash retained through its own channels. Xu said customers ultimately judge platforms on price, speed, accuracy, and support, rather than on which surface they used to find the product.
DoorDash said two thirds of its code is now written by AI. The company reported that merchant onboarding and menu building are handled by agents, while catalog annotation and customer support are also handled by agents. Xu said AI models can now complete multistep tasks end to end, a capability that was unreliable as recently as six to eight months ago.
DoorDash became the volume leader in grocery delivery last fall and maintained that position through Q1. The company said one in every two new customers entering grocery delivery for the first time is coming through DoorDash. It also reported that mature cohorts are buying larger baskets.
DoorDash said its new verticals portfolio is on track to be gross profit positive in the second half of 2026.
Xu said about 30% of monthly active users order from categories outside restaurants, and that the figure should eventually reach 100%. He attributed the gap to limitations in grocery inventory systems, where out-of-stocks and substitutions can prevent online grocery from matching the in-store experience.
Dash Fulfillment Services, DoorDash’s inventory management and fulfillment offering built with grocery and retail partners, is live with a handful of partners. The company said it will not expand further until it can replicate what it has built in restaurant delivery.
DoorDash said global tech replatforming is unifying DoorDash, Deliveroo, and Wolt onto a single stack. It reported that production traffic is running through the new stack, and that a feature previously requiring three separate shipments across three brands now ships once.
CFO Ravi Inukonda said the overall cost of the program has stayed consistent with what he communicated two quarters ago. DoorDash also cited performance updates: Deliveroo is posting its highest growth rates in four years, and Wolt is at its highest share performance across every country it operates in.
Advertising: DoorDash said ads hit a record high and are growing faster than any previous year. Xu said the ads business has never performed better, with gains across CPG advertisers, SMB restaurants, and retailers. DoorDash said it runs a lower ad load than competing platforms while delivering stronger advertiser return on ad spend.
DoorDash for Business: DoorDash for Business, which includes catering, meal manager, corporate DashPass, and group ordering, is growing quickly. Xu said scaling catering requires solving kitchen capacity, menu design, staffing, and logistics simultaneously, and that the company is working through these issues with merchants before expanding.
Autonomous delivery: Caper autonomous delivery robots are scaling in multiple markets. Xu said operating at scale under any condition requires hardened autonomy, hardware, remote operations, and regulatory approvals across cities, and that this work is ongoing before further expansion.
Q1 2026: Marketplace GOV was $31.6 billion, up 37% year over year (or 24% excluding Deliveroo). Revenue was $4 billion, up 33% (or 21% excluding Deliveroo). Total orders were 933 million, up 27% year over year. Free cash flow was $420 million. DoorDash ended the quarter with $4.6 billion in cash.
Q2 guidance: DoorDash guided marketplace GOV of $32.4 billion to $33.4 billion.
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