Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to the DoorDash third quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's opening statement, we will host a question- and- answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. I will now hand the call over to Weston Twigg. Please go ahead.
All right. Thank you, Dustin. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us for our Q3 2026 earnings call. I'm pleased to be joined today by Co-founder, Chair, and CEO, Tony Xu, and CFO, Ravi Inukonda. We'll be making forward-looking statements during today's call, including, without limitation, our expectations for our business, financial position, operating performance, profitability, our guidance, strategies, capital allocation approach, and the broader economic environment. We will also be making forward-looking statements about our pending acquisition of Instacart, including, without limitation, the expected timing and likelihood of completion of the acquisition and our plans, objectives, intentions, and expectations with respect to the acquisition and the combined company. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Many of these uncertainties are described in our SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q.
You should not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future events or performance. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information regarding our non-GAAP financial measures, including a reconciliation of such non-GAAP measures and the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, may be found in our earnings release, which is available on our investor relations website at ir.doordash.com. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to our GAAP results and are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results. Finally, this call is being audio webcasted on our Investor Relations website. An audio replay of the call will be available on our website shortly after the call ends. Operator, I'll pass it back to you, and we can take our first question.
Thank you. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Please limit yourself to one question. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. Please pick up your handset when asking a question. If you're muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Your first question comes from the line of Andrew Boone with Citizens Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks so much for taking the question. Tony, you laid out a pretty compelling case in terms of adding additional demand to DashMarts. Can you just flesh that out, help us understand what your vision is for DashMarts and how Instacart plays into that? Thank you.
Yeah. If you think about where grocery delivery is, it really is just a fraction of what its potential could be. I think the reason, I have said this quite a lot in the past, that the product really is not there yet. Customers today are still being asked to pay a premium for imperfect delivery. The question is, how can we actually ensure that we offer perfect deliveries at the most affordable prices? The way I think about this is it really is a sequencing roadmap. Our journey really started five years ago when we began our own work in new verticals. It has been a very successful endeavor. As part of that journey, we recognized that in order to offer the best possible service at the most affordable prices, we really needed to manage the inventory because stock-outs were a key issue.
When you look at, for example, the deliveries that we fulfill from DashMarts versus the deliveries that we do third party, even though we have best-in-class logistics operations quality in the third party stores, we are near perfect in our deliveries with DashMarts, but we are only in the low 90s in terms of our accuracy through the third party stores. There is a meaningful gap. But we have been able to prove demonstrably that we can close it both first by holding our own inventory and now actually managing thousands of items for fantastic retail partners like Giant Eagle or Albertsons, and many others. But when you think about this business, it is a fixed cost business when you are managing inventory. So scale is really helpful.
When I think about today's news in partnering with Instacart and the fact that they have unique demand, or orders that are unique to our network, that not only helps, certainly on a day one scenario post-close, where the added density in the last mile network brings fulfillment efficiencies to offer faster delivery as well as lower cost throughout the system. But it allows us to continue to invest on our end state journey of building what we believe will be the best-in-class product for all retailers to be able to compete against the world's biggest companies. That will enable faster delivery. It will enable more affordable prices, which in turn will generate more sales for every grocer and retailer, and more earnings opportunity for every shopper.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shweta Khajuria from Wolfe. Please go ahead.
Okay, thank you for taking my question. Let me try two, please. One is you talked in your release and letter that you expect multi-year path to $500 million or more in annual synergies, net of investments. Could you please talk about where those synergies will be coming from, and where do you expect to invest in year one, over 100% of total synergies will be invested. Could you please talk about how do you see that play out? Then second, on DoorDash's just core business, U.S. marketplace GOV accelerated on tougher comps, which is impressive. I guess you talked to rise in frequency as well as new consumers ordering. Could you please talk to that a little bit more? How do you see demand trend and what, going forward, will drive organic U.S. restaurant marketplace growth? Thanks a lot.
Hey, Shweta, it's Ravi. Look, I'll take both of them, and Tony, feel free to chime in. Look, I think there's an opportunity, Shweta, for us to build a really large, and attractive business, right? If you think about synergies, which is the part of your question, there's a number of big blocks that you could think about. Let's start with the growth ones first. Look, there's an opportunity for us to cross-list merchants. For example, there's categories that are not available on both platforms. There's a clear opportunity for us to be able to cross-list them, which drives growth. One of the clearest examples is we are going to be able to list our restaurants platform on Instacart, which is going to drive top-line growth. Second, I would talk about is just purely ads.
CPG advertisers will now have more consumers to reach, which will not only drive quality, but also a higher ad spend, which will in turn drive more ROAS. The third one that I would think about is there is an opportunity for us to cross-sell products. Instacart has built a really strong first-party software infrastructure, which we can now cross-sell to grocers on our platform, as well as Tony touched on DashMart Fulfillment Services. It's going to be an opportunity for us to make that available to more customers across both platforms. Look, on the efficiency side, Dasher density, shopper density is going to be pretty critical. As you increase the volume, that's going to drive efficiency in the fulfillment network. Finally, if you look up and on the P&L, there's a number of opportunities, whether it's opportunities on sales and marketing, opportunities on support.
There's many opportunities that we could jointly work on together. As we thought about the opportunities that can jointly arise from combining both platforms. One thing that's pretty clear is putting both platforms together will actually rise to leading in growth as well as increasing in overall profit dollar production. The key for us, however, is how do you take some of the profit dollars and reinvest that back in the business to ultimately build a better product for consumers as well as grocers. Look, that's historically what we've done. To the second point in your question, which is what's driving the growth in the core marketplace. Largely because of the reinvestment back in the product, our playbook is going to be very similar here.
You can see examples from that in our acquisition of Wolt as well, where we reinvested back in the product to ultimately drive the growth that you're seeing in the business. In fact, when I look at the new verticals platform, our core business is doing really well. That's growing quite nicely. We've become volume share leaders. We've continued to improve the customer outcomes, whether it's increase in order rate, increase in order frequency, the basket sizes are growing. The way we think about this is this is actually an accelerant to our core business, which continues to do well. The other side, which is the core business continues to do well, which gives us, A, the conviction and the capacity to be able to do more.
Now, if you're thinking about it from a modeling perspective, the way I would think about the model is year one is going to be the investment that we'll make to build a better product. Year two, we'll make progress. Finally, in year three, my expectation is we'll drive $500 million of incremental synergies to the bottom line that is net of the investments that we plan to make.
Thanks, Ravi. That is helpful.
On the second one, look, you are right. The core business is doing really well. It is firing on all cylinders, right? If you look at the growth that we are seeing in the business, Q3, our restaurant business actually accelerated from Q2 to Q3. In fact, when you look at the sequential growth rate in Q3, it is the fastest we have seen in the last five-plus years. New verticals continues to grow, both Wolt as well as Deliveroo, they also accelerated from Q2 to Q3. More broadly, when you look at our overall U.S. restaurant growth, it has been stable actually for the last four years. A lot of that has got to do with the underlying improvements in the product. We have invested back in selection. We have made subscription better. Overall paid subscribers continue to set all-time records.
The combination of the work that we have done in improving the product while continuing to drive subscription is what you are seeing in terms of the growth that you are seeing in the business. Again, the growth is coming from sustainable levers, which is user growth, subscription growth. The way, at least I think about it from a mental model perspective is these are compounding growths that will come in the future, which gives us a lot more confidence as we look ahead into what we can drive in terms of both growth as well as profit dollar production for the next several years.
Thanks, Ravi. That was helpful.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Deepak Mathivanan from Cantor Fitzgerald. Deep, go ahead.
Thanks for taking the question. Great. Thank you. Tony, on the acquisition of Instacart, can you talk about why now is the right time? Your grocery business is strong, and you have most of the retail partners, too. DashMart is offering a very differentiated value prop to retailers. Can you talk about why now is the right time? Also a second one, a high-level strategy question on AI agents. How much of the agentic experience, specifically for food use case, be it grocery delivery or food delivery, or maybe meal planning and others, do you want Dash to kind of directly power for consumers with succeeding some of that to more generic agents like Muse? Or maybe asked another way, should we expect Dash to have its own set of personal agents specifically catered for food use cases for consumers? How should we think about that?
Thank you so much.
Yeah. Hey, Deepak. I will take both of those. On the first question about why now, it is a great question because M&A is very hard to do successfully. We always take these decisions extremely seriously. I would say the first thing is our core business is doing really well. Ravi touched upon a bit of this, and as you can see in the results that we just published this morning on the quarter, record highs in top-line, bottom line, accelerating growth in the U.S. restaurants business, continued fast growth on new verticals, accelerating growth in our international properties. You continue to see product innovation from us. For example, our most recent Dash Forward event with the announcements of DoorDash Air, DashOS, and merchant software, as well as, speaking of AI agents, updates to our own AI agents. The core business is truly firing on all cylinders.
I would say the second thing is our big projects for the year are on track. The year is not over. But if you look at the projects around building a single tech stack, if you look at the projects around integrating Deliveroo, some of the results speak for themselves. We are seeing customer benefits already from the single tech stack work, whether it is faster onboarding of merchants, better conversion from improved search, better SLAs for support across all audiences. These are just some of the ones that come top of mind. If you look at the Roo side, we grew in Q3 at twice the rate that we did a year ago, before we acquired the business. All of the big projects we had for the year were projects that are doing really well.
From a management bandwidth perspective and a sequencing perspective, we felt like we had the space to do something offensive. This is a space we understand really well, the grocery marketplace space, both because we have built our own grocery marketplace very successfully to the premise of your question, as well as the fact that we have integrated other marketplaces very successfully into the DoorDash family, whether it is Wolt, whether it is Deliveroo, whether it is actually even thinking about how we have reinvested over the years back into product innovation in driving durable growth for our own U.S. restaurants marketplace. I think those would be all three demonstrable examples of our understanding of how to run a marketplace at scale, both driving top-line growth durably, but also generating long-term total profit dollars. That is what we intend to do here and play offense.
When I think about Instacart, I talked a little bit about how it feeds us on the journey towards building this end state, which is being able to manage inventory on behalf of every retailer of every size. But when I think about this really is about giving every retailer of every size the ability to compete in a world where technology is only accelerating faster, disruption is happening more quickly, and the world's biggest companies are becoming larger. When I think about the capabilities that the combined companies will have, we will have best-in-class software to help each one of these grocers. That is something that Instacart has done a fantastic job building over a decade in helping grocers build their first-party online channels.
You combine that with our first-party logistics capabilities, which we pioneered with DoorDash Drive also over a decade ago, and you can offer merchants the ability to build the best-in-class first-party experience for fast delivery, their own loyalty programs, their own data, their own customers. Then you look at the third-party side of the house, the combined marketplace, and the combined reach gives every grocer higher quality orders, faster delivery, which is going to generate more sales. I think it was just the time to play offense. You are right, everything is going great with the core business. This only adds to it. Your second question was around AI agents. I would say that this is something that is still a very dynamic area. My take on all things technology is you never want to fight gravity. But at the same time, you do not want to be delusional.
What I mean by that is if you look at where AI agents are today, we are seeing maybe several hundred orders in total from some of these third-party agents, some of which you have cited in terms of whether or not customers are placing orders. I think it is because they still largely view these third-party assistants, not necessarily for what I call these easier tasks, whether it is ordering food, like you said. The predominant use case of that is actually through our app. What we have been doing is actually in learning with some of these third parties, what are the features that actually drive incremental orders, in which case we can build a very healthy partnership with some of these third-party assistants.
What are the features that actually just make the DoorDash app and our own AI agents, whether it is Ask DoorDash, the Text DoorDash, which is something that we released recently, our MCP that we have been giving to third parties to use for things like corporate lunch orders, things like this, to just make our app easier to use. I think that is the win-win of what we have been able to see, where the volumes are very low, as I kind of cited, but I do believe there is a path in which you can get incremental orders, and allow customers to order the way that they want to order, especially for long consideration purchases or purchases they are not even thinking about that might be proactively made on their behalf.
For the everyday ordering, what we see is people come to DoorDash and they come back to DoorDash. It is easy to use. We are making it easier to use, and we expect to continue to do so.
Deepak, going back to your first question, I will just reiterate one point. Look, I mean, you are absolutely right. Our core business on new verticals is doing really well, right? Look, we have been operating this business for the last five years. A lot of performance that we have demonstrated over the last five years. If you look at the performance of that business, that business is growing really fast. When I look at the cohorts, MAUs are increasing, basket size is increasing. People are using us for different use cases. We actually think the combination is truly going to be an accelerant for us. We talked about efficiency.
A couple of calls ago, I mentioned that the overall new verticals portfolio is going to be gross profit positive by the end of the year. We are pretty close to doing that. We are pretty close to being breakeven on a gross profit level.
The combination of both Instacart and us actually adds to that vision. We are doing it from a position of strength, the way we think about it.
Awesome. Thank you.
No problem.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nikhil Devnani from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks for taking the question. Maybe just a follow-up to what you were just talking about, Ravi. I guess, have you found the organic effort in the category to be harder than you initially expected, when it comes to building wallet share or recurring habitual behavior around grocery? I appreciate that the growth has been quite strong, but I am just wondering the extent to which you feel Instacart might help with some of the more challenging aspects of the build-out. Then maybe a related question on the deal is just, given the re-platforming and integration exercise you are going through this year for the other assets, how does that help your overall integration ability and sort of the speed at which you can move with this deal once it eventually closes? Thank you.
Yeah. Hey, Nikhil. I will take the first one. Look, I mean, I think quite the contrary. Actually, in my answer to Deepak's question, I talked about what we are seeing from an underlying cohort perspective. The way at least we run the business is ultimately, it is a cohort business. I look at the historic cohorts to see what the behavior of the future cohorts is going to be. When I look at mature cohorts, the behavior that we are seeing is people are using us more. More of those cohorts are coming back, which tells me that the product has gotten better. People are getting habituated to the product. Their basket sizes are increasing. Their engagement on the platform is increasing. That is now starting to translate into newer cohorts as well, where we are seeing similar signs of strength in the newer cohorts.
That to me, truly is what we think is actually going to happen in the overall business as well, as you continue to add more and more newer cohorts. Our goal has been, how do you continue to improve the product? Well, it is adding more selection. Look, we just added Costco on the platform, which is off to a great start. We have increased the quality of the platform. Overall, more number of DashPass subscribers are continuing to use categories outside of the core restaurants, and that number continues to grow. All of this gives us confidence that people are using the product more. They are engaging with us even more, which is also driving into some of the efficiencies that I talked about, right?
As we continue to scale that platform, we are seeing efficiency gains also come back and benefit the overall platform, which we are reinvesting back in the business. To us, the combination of both Instacart and us is actually going to accelerate this vision. The simple mental model that we have is, look, when you put both companies together, there is an obvious opportunity in driving both higher top-line growth as well as higher profit dollar production. On top of that, we are going to have synergies.
Our goal is, how do you take a portion of that, reinvest that back in the business historically, like we have done with Deliveroo, like we have done with our core restaurants business, which is what is driving the stable growth, use that to ultimately drive a better product, which in fact, will drive more growth over the longer term, as well as get the customers to adopt a better product.
Nikhil, I will just add a little bit to that before I talk about your question on the integration of the tech stacks. To get, I guess, one level deeper, a lot of what I think about here is actually how can we actually help improve the Instacart business as well as how can they help improve ours? I actually think that because of the success we have seen in running our marketplace, as well as the marketplaces, as I have mentioned, of the ones we have integrated, as well as how we have reinvested back into the U.S. restaurants marketplace and some of the things we have learned on how to do that, I think we will actually be able to re-accelerate the Instacart marketplace.
I actually think that they will help us grow a lot of the first-party software products for grocers and retailers, something that they started ahead of us, whereas we kind of focused on first party on the restaurant front. I actually think that it is quite a nice mutual combination here, where you are bringing the best of both, where on the DoorDash side, the best-in-class understanding of logistics operations, how to manage the marketplace to total profit dollars, how to generate product innovation in a continuous way. Then on the Instacart side, the best-in-class software tools for grocers and their own online channels. Your second question was around tech stack. I am glad you asked it.
This is a huge endeavor for us, and I actually do not even think most people appreciate how big of a deal it is, because we are not only trying to get all of our features into one tech stack, which means that we ship once, we ship everywhere, but we are actually building new infrastructure. Like actually new infrastructure to run core DoorDash, which will make any future integration much easier to run because it will just kind of work out of the box. So it will actually speed things up quite a bit. That is why we decided to undertake such a large investment, both in terms of dollars as well as people. Literally rebuilding this airplane, as we are flying it, part by part, engine by engine. So it will actually speed things up in the future.
Thank you both.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Morton from MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thank you. One for Tony, and then one for Ravi. Tony, I was curious as to how you expect this deal to be perceived by your grocery customers. Will it land with them that DoorDash is becoming at similar scale to Amazon and Walmart and going to help them in that competition, or will it raise concerns that they have now one concentrated service provider? Because those grocers are obviously powerful, with local regulatory bodies. My next question for Ravi is just, I was curious as to why you are using your shares. Historically, you have been very disciplined with repurchasing shares, and it is trading at a level where you have been active repurchasing. Just trying to get a better understanding as to why you see it is an opportunity to use your currency at these prices and not just more cash. Thank you.
Yeah. Hey, Michael. I will take the first one. We expect a very positive response from grocers. A lot of what we talk about with grocers, is just how can we together help them compete against the largest companies in the world, online, offline? How do we actually help them build the capabilities of great technology, a modern tech stack, as well as fast delivery? You really need all of these component parts to have a fighting chance. If you have seen what has happened in the grocery industry in particular, the largest companies are only getting larger and eating more of the pie. The question is: how do you give everybody else a fair fighting shot? I think, the grocers view things very similarly. These are conversations about what is happening in the industry in terms of the biggest companies eating more of the pie.
That conversation has been happening for the past decade, and it's only kind of gone in that direction of travel. The question is: how do we give everybody else the capabilities to have a level playing field? That's what we see in this potential partnership, which is we're going to give you the tools, we're going to give you the business with added density, which will help with faster delivery times, more affordable prices for everyone, greater earning opportunities for shoppers. We think it really puts together the best possible chance where you have a modern tech stack that we are only going to continue investing in innovating it. More and new fulfillment models, which we are inventing as we speak. Certainly, reinvestment, which has been the philosophy all along the way at DoorDash and how we've built our own marketplace.
Hey, Mike. Look, on the second point, I think you're absolutely right. We value our stock very highly. We are focused on dilution. It was important for Instacart to have some stock in the deal, as overall, they wanted to participate in the upside in the business. We believe there's upside in the business. We are happy with the consideration between cash and stock. What I will tell you is, our philosophy on buyback has not changed. Right? To the second part of your question. We've been conservative. We were going to be opportunistic. We're happy with the buybacks that we've done so far, which has generated a strong IRR. In the future, if we see there's a good opportunity to buy back, we are happy to do that as long as it's a good return on the overall investment.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Beck from Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for taking the question. I wanted to ask just a little bit about the ambitions on DashMart. I think in the shareholder letter, you mentioned thousands of items from some of the big, well-known grocers. If you look at someone like Instacart, they have spoken to selection of millions or tens of millions of items. Is there an ambition to have, probably not a similar selection, but maybe some fraction of that, available via DashMart? How should we think about the investment angle behind DashMart? Is this something where we need a much bigger fulfillment footprint, and we should be thinking more warehouses, more employees? I would like to hear a little bit about how we should trend that up. Thank you.
Sure. Yeah. Hey, Josh. I will take that one. If you look at the next decade of work, it really is about making sure that we can build the local infrastructure for all things last mile delivery for everything inside your city. That is what DoorDash is working on. That is about merchant software. That is about building new fulfillment models, so some of the warehousing that you are discussing. Of course, it is always about making sure that we have the highest quality, and most affordable logistics network. It is why we are investing deeply into autonomy, both land vehicles and drones. You are right, there is going to be investment. The way I think about this is a lot of the real estate, though, that we are talking about, in many ways, is already been designed for us.
There are hundreds of thousands of grocery stores available that carry these millions of items that you are already talking about. The real question is whether or not all of that square footage and all of that shelf space is being utilized in the most productive way. None of these stores, as you probably know, are built for delivery. They were effectively built for browsing. In a world where delivery and convenience are a much bigger part of consumer expectations and a growing trend, something has to change in order to offer a cost structure as well as a price point that consumers expect to see, so that they will continue growing their relationships with each one of these grocers. That is really what we believe we can build with Instacart. This is a sequencing process.
This is not something, when you are talking about all things physical and not just pure digital, you cannot just hit a button and then magically everything changes. You have to understand that it is a marriage of technology operations and people. A lot of these fantastic businesses, these grocers, have been built over many decades. Their processes have been built over many decades. The question is: How do we allow those stores to shine as the showrooms, and how do we actually build the correct square footage as the warehouse or the back-of-house infrastructure, such that we can offer fast delivery at attractive prices to compete against the world's biggest companies? That is the vision of DashMart, but it is a sequencing process.
Step one, day one after close, it's how do we actually take the combined network where you have added density, and DoorDash understands well how to reinvest that added density and give back value to everybody, every audience, consumers, grocers, shoppers. How do we then take that added scale to then drive down further costs as we think about managing warehouses, which is a fixed cost business. How do we then do that with more types of SKUs and items, so that we can bring more of the store. Then how do we bring every single store and ultimately everything inside your city to you in minutes?
Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bernie McTernan from Needham & Company. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just a follow-up on some of the, maybe more eloquently said, regulatory questions. Tony, is there anything else to add in terms of what got you comfortable in order to get this deal past regulatory. And then second, any additional plans on the go to market. It seems like the plan is to keep the Instacart brand, but just wanted to see from a consumer perspective, what we should expect. Thank you.
Yeah. The first thing I will say is that, the first question I always ask is what is something fair, and what is it that we actually want to see in the world? What I believe is fair and something that we want to see in the world is a world in which every business locally of every size has a fair chance at competing. That is the mission of DoorDash. That is really why I created DoorDash. If that were to happen, then GDP grows locally, which is the best possible way of GDP growth, not just for jobs, but also for the safety and health of communities, and really the lifestyle of why we pick the different neighborhoods and cities in which we live.
When I think about it from that perspective, and you just look at what is happening in the grocery industry, for example, over the past decade or even two decades, what you see is the largest companies are only eating more and more of the pie. Why is that? It is because they have invested aggressively into capabilities like, a modern technology stack, like fast delivery, like new fulfillment models. That has been very difficult, when you are a smaller player, to invest in on your own. That is what this combination is really about, where DoorDash and Instacart can give every retailer a fighting chance at competing in the modern-day era. I believe that if we can do that is great for every community. So when I think about it from that perspective, that is how I get comfortable, A, knowing it is the right thing to do.
Whenever you are doing the right thing, that usually is the right narrative for anyone. The second comment around go to market. We will not say too much about this for now, but you are right. I think Instacart has built a great brand, and it is a very unique brand where their audience is very loyal to that brand. So we certainly will support it. We certainly will bring value to consumers. For instance, for the same price that you pay for a DashPass today, you will get access to two subscription programs, the Instacart membership program, as well as the DoorDash membership program. We have some other ideas, too. But a lot of the value in this partnership is really going to come in all things, what I see almost like not visible to the consumer.
They will see the benefits in the form of faster delivery, lower prices, greater selection, higher quality, and accuracy of orders. Grocers will see the value in terms of extra sales. Shoppers will see the value in terms of greater earning opportunities, and communities will see the value in greater GDP.
Thank you. Moving forward, our next question comes from the line of Youssef Squali from Truist. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you so much. I just have one question. Ravi, can you maybe just talk a little bit about where you guys are with regards to re-platforming? How much of it has been completed so far? Are you on track? Are you ahead on budget? Then, I guess, as part of that question, as Instacart comes into the fold, I guess starting in 2028, is it fair to assume that effectively the re-platforming becomes a work in progress that extends way beyond next year as well, as you try to integrate Instacart and hopefully generate the type of synergies you are talking about?
Yeah. Hey, Youssef, let me take that one. Look, I think on the overall tech platform, it is on track, both from a cost as well as a timeline perspective compared to what I talked about a few quarters ago. In fact, we have been working on it in a very modular fashion. We have several modules that are already live on the new tech stack. We are already starting to see traffic flow through it. We are truly seeing customer benefits, too. In places where we have already deployed our new tech stack, merchants are getting onboarded faster, customer support is starting to get better. We are already starting to see early signs of benefit. In terms of the overall timeline, look, I expect that to be done by the first half of 2027, which is what we had originally expected.
Overall, we feel very good about both timeline as well as cost. To your second point around integration of Instacart onto the overall new tech stack. Look, one of the core features, as we thought about the new tech stack, was the ability to add more future acquisitions and future platforms onto the tech stack. We have done some work around this. We think there is some investment needed, but overall, we do not think it is a massive investment to be able to operate both tech stacks on the re-platform tech stack on a go-forward basis.
Yeah, Youssef, the one thing I will add is something I said, I think on an earlier question, which is, one of the biggest parts in why this current work on building a single tech stack is so expensive is we are actually literally building new infrastructure. Which is why you have a lot of different copies of compute instances, and you are over-provisioning things, and you are doing all of these things, so that you literally have a much faster capability to build any new thing in the future. That includes, obviously, building organically, but also what Ravi said, integrating new products or new technologies or new services. It makes us ready for any modern work we want to do with AI agents. It makes us ready for any new acquisitions.
Great. Thank you both.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dominic Ball from Rothschild & Co Redburn.
Hey, guys.
Please go ahead.
Thanks for the question. Hi, guys. Thanks for the question and congrats on the news. I just want to go back to another question around consumer AI agents. Acquiring Instacart strengthens your position in the physical world, but advertising is a meaningful contributor to DoorDash's EBITDA. How do you see that business evolving as consumers, over time, shop through AI agents? Could there be a revenue share agreement with these consumer agents going forward? Thank you.
Yeah. Hey, Dominic. I do not know if you were able to catch the top of the call. We discussed some of this, which is, right now, AI agents are generating several hundred orders across the time that they have been up and running. So it has been a fairly low use case. And I believe that there will be opportunities in which we can generate win-win opportunities with third-party agents.
My general philosophy when it comes to technology is you never want to fight gravity. And that includes how consumers want to use technology. If consumers want to use technology to shop in certain ways, we are going to find a way to make that a win-win partnership. And I do believe there are a lot of incremental possible use cases whether it be helping with long consideration purchases, whether it be doing work on your behalf proactively in the background.
But when it comes to a task that is as simple as ordering food, we tend to see that come directly to DoorDash. Not to mention, we are building our own AI agents to make the shopping process a lot easier. But you also have to remember one thing, which is it is not just about ordering food. That is actually not the hard part of the entire process, or ordering groceries. The hard part is making sure that they actually show up and show up in the way that you expected, in the condition that you want. That end-to-end journey and making sure all of that is going to happen appropriately, especially when things go awry, we found that to be true living in our product. That said, I actually think that there will be advertising opportunities even within some of these AI agents.
But first and foremost, we have to find ways to bring value to consumers. Right now, with the low volumes that I'm telling you about, there isn't yet that value. But, as hopefully that grows, we'll find a way to make that work.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of Justin Post from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Can you give us any idea of the scale of their grocery business relative to yours? And then, acquisitions in the grocery space have been somewhat difficult in the past. As you think about talking to the regulators, what are some of the points you would think about as far as a share and how this really benefits grocers? Thank you.
Hey, Justin. Let me take this one. I think on your first question on share of grocery, it is public information. We are not going to disclose anything about Instacart. To your second point around the value to grocers, ultimately we talked about some of this, right? The goal is how do you take the combination of both capabilities that both companies have, and how do you build a better platform, right? We have a highly sophisticated logistics engine. We have a demand generation engine. We build DashMart Fulfillment Services for some merchants that we talked about. Instacart has done a really good job of being able to build a very large enterprise storefront platform in addition to their own demand generation engine. I think the combination of both of these will actually help increase the number of products that we can co-sell to both sets of merchants.
In addition to that, I think there is an opportunity where we can actually invest back in the product to build a better product, not just for grocers, for consumers as well. We actually think the combination of both is a win-win for consumers, grocers, as well as overall shoppers in the ecosystem.
Thank you.
Thank you. That concludes our question- and- answer session. This concludes today's call as well. Thank you all for attending, and you may now disconnect.