• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
TechDoorDash

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on the company’s long-awaited IPO

By
Danielle Abril
Danielle Abril
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Danielle Abril
Danielle Abril
Down Arrow Button Icon
December 9, 2020, 2:00 PM ET
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Our mission to make business better is fueled by readers like you. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.

DoorDash made a highly anticipated debut on Wall Street Wednesday, following a year of unexpectedly strong growth fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.

The food delivery company reportedly raised $3.4 billion after boosting the price of the shares sold in the IPO to $102, up from a range of $90 to $95.

The company’s shares began trading midday Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DASH.

“I’m feeling great,” Tony Xu said before trading began. “I’m super grateful for all the hard work by everybody over the past seven years inside our walls…and very excited about the future.”

The company joins other tech companies that made their public debuts this year, including video conferencing tech company Zoom, cloud-storage firm Snowflake, and data analytics business Palantir. Home rental service Airbnb is expected to IPO later this week.

DoorDash’s IPO comes as consumers and restaurants have increasingly depended on food delivery during the pandemic, which has tripled DoorDash’s year-over-year revenue during the first nine months of the year.

Xu spoke to Fortune on Wednesday. His answers have been edited for length and clarity. 

Fortune: What did you learn about investor appetite during the roadshow? 

Xu: We saw there was significantly more demand than the stock that we can actually issue and allocate. It was really a reflection of the strength of the underlying business. Those fundamentals that we outline are revealed in our S-1, and especially similar cohort economic information gave people the look under the hood and may have surprised them. It’s contrary to some of the narrative that I think has been written about this industry before. 

On the other hand, it was a reflection of their excitement for the future. DoorDash, having built the largest on-demand audience for food, certainly has the opportunity now to go beyond food, and we are with our launches into categories like convenience and grocery. Having built the largest local logistics network that serves 390,000 restaurants, I think people get really excited by what that could become in the future.

What are your plans for the funds raised? 

As I’ve said internally to the company about all financings—and this is just a financing—is that you don’t have to spend it all at once. In fact, the only investments that we’re making today are distributions from our Main Street Strong initiative. 

It’s a $200 million pledge we made about a month and a half ago, over five years investing in our merchants and in our Dashers [the company’s term for the contractors who deliver for the company]. Twelve million dollars are rewards, from $500 up to $20,000, for Dashers who’ve been with us and have completed over 5,000 deliveries. We’re distributing $10 million to the merchants to make sure that they can survive winter, one of the most challenging parts of the pandemic. 

While we were adding new use cases, we’re building more products like in-store pickup and DoorDash for Work serving offices, which I think will come back once we come out of the pandemic. We’re building more products on our platform to supplement what we already have like DoorDash Storefront [software that gives restaurants the ability to create their own online stores] and DoorDash Drive [the company’s white-label delivery software that it licenses to other businesses with delivery operations]. And we’re looking at opportunities to grow geographically. 

What has it been like holding an IPO during the pandemic? 

Well, it’s a lot of starts and stops. We started our planning process to being a public business a year and a half ago. Obviously nobody was contemplating a pandemic. 

When the pandemic struck in late February/early March, we put the plans for the IPO on the shelf. We sprinted into action, solving problems for our audiences, distributing tens of millions of units of PPE, cutting commissions by 50% for restaurants, and investing in the community by giving hundreds of thousands of health care workers free deliveries. 

Once we kind of got a little bit more wind underneath us in the summer, we brought the plans for the IPO back off the shelf. 

The process has certainly been a journey. It’s been tumultuous. 

What are the biggest priorities ahead?

We have a lot on our plate. We have to keep focusing on just building a better product experience. We have to improve our selection of restaurants. We have to improve the delivery quality itself. We have to make our service more affordable. We have to make our system more efficient. That’s the main thing.

We’re so early in the opportunity just in food. Only 10% of the restaurant industry is doing delivery today. Ninety percent is still happening through a phone call, a curbside pickup, a drive-thru order. Increasingly those physical experiences are becoming digitized into e-commerce experiences, and we’re helping [restaurants] make that transition. That’s just a massive opportunity. 

We’re entering other categories we believe that we can bring everything in your city to you in minutes, not hours or days. And we’re evaluating opportunities to launch in new geographies.

About the Author
By Danielle Abril
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

Why build AI data centers in a cornfield when Saudi Arabia has cheap oil and cheaper power?
Big TechMeta
Why build AI data centers in a cornfield when Saudi Arabia has cheap oil and cheaper power?
By Catherina GioinoJuly 2, 2026
40 minutes ago
Scott Bessent, US treasury secretary, during an Economic Club of New York (ECNY) event in New York, US, on Tuesday, June 23, 2026.
Economynational debt
Elon Musk says AI is the only way to fix the $40 trillion U.S. debt crisis—but a new study says even the most optimistic scenario won’t fill the hole
By Eleanor PringleJuly 2, 2026
3 hours ago
A test of Anduril's Altius drone.
NewslettersTerm Sheet
Defense tech could be entering its awkward teenage years. Is the boom a bubble?
By Allie GarfinkleJuly 2, 2026
3 hours ago
em
Commentary250 Years of Innovation
America’s 250th birthday has Elon Musk and a record IPO. Its 15th had Alexander Hamilton — and a stock market bubble
By Owen LamontJuly 2, 2026
3 hours ago
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (left) and CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth in Menlo Park, California, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. (Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
NewslettersFortune Tech
Meta prepares to join the cloud infrastructure fray
By Andrew NuscaJuly 2, 2026
4 hours ago
Sam Altman seeks new world order for AI as OpenAI slowly loses ground to Google and Anthropic 
AIMarkets
Sam Altman seeks new world order for AI as OpenAI slowly loses ground to Google and Anthropic 
By Jim EdwardsJuly 2, 2026
5 hours ago

Most Popular

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
Big Tech
As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezJuly 1, 2026
1 day ago
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
Success
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
By Sydney LakeJune 25, 2026
7 days ago
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 1, 2026
1 day ago
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
Success
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
By Preston ForeJune 27, 2026
5 days ago
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
Newsletters
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
By Diane BradyJuly 1, 2026
1 day ago
Trump got a $78K pension from the Screen Actors Guild in 2025 because he appeared in Home Alone 2 in 1992
Politics
Trump got a $78K pension from the Screen Actors Guild in 2025 because he appeared in Home Alone 2 in 1992
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 1, 2026
21 hours ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.