AI, IPOs, bidding wars and footlong subs with your weekly Walmart run… there’s plenty to get into this week!
Today’s edition is brought to you by Urban Autonomy Summit Detroit, convening 6/9.
Today:
Walmart’s Delivering Dinner
Zepto Readies Billion Dollar IPO
Chart Time | Ninja Wants Delivery Hero Too
Gopuff’s Hallucinatory New AI Ordering Tool
1PD | Walmart Adds In-Store Restaurant Express Delivery
Have you ever found yourself perusing the Walmart app, filling your cart with various sundries, when you got a little… hungry? Well, instead of having to switch to another app, you can now add a restaurant order to your Walmart Express Delivery, starting with a partnership with Subway. Subway delivery through the Walmart app and Walmart.com is now live at select stores in Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, and will expand to 1,400 locations by summer’s end. Customers will be able to fully customize their sub orders from within the Walmart checkout flow, so you can make that footlong as saucy as your heart desires.
The Big Picture: Walmart and Amazon have been duking it out over 30 minute deliveries these past few months, with the Bentonville Big Boxer’s half hour deliveries covering nearly half the country just after Bezos and Co. did the same. And while Amazon Prime might offer discounted Grubhub+ to its members, directly integrating restaurant orders with retail purchases is something Amazon can’t yet match. Kicking things off with Subway is a natural starting point: the sandwich chain has had in-store locations since 2004 and is now Walmart’s largest restaurant tenant. Expect adoption to be swift: Subway — the nation’s ninth largest QSR — is reportedly requiring franchisees within Walmarts to participate in the program, as of June 1.
EVENTS | The Urban Autonomy Summit Heads to Detroit — Tomorrow!
From delivery bots, to robotaxis to personally-owned AVs, the conversations around autonomous vehicles are only getting more and more critical. Our acclaimed Urban Autonomy Summit heads to Detroit on June 9th. Apply now to attend, limited spots still available.
FINANCE | Zepto Plans Blockbuster IPO
Indian quick-commerce heavyweight Zepto updated its IPO prospectus: the q-commerce platform plans to sell 80 billion rupees ($836 million) in new shares, while existing investors will offload 113.5 million shares as well. The company, which promises deliveries in as little as 10 minutes, has almost doubled its revenue to Rs 7,498 crore (~$895M) in the past 12 months, although losses have grown nearly as fast, hitting approximately $184 million USD in Q4.
The Big Picture: Zepto needs to keep filling its coffers in the race to bring food and goods to India’s growing consumer market as quickly as possible. Its main competitors Swiggy and Eternal-owned Blinkit are both publicly listed, with the latter showing profitability on an Adjusted EBITDA basis. Other deep-pocketed competitors include Amazon, Walmart-backed Flipkart and Tata Group’s BigBasket. Zepto was last valued at $7 billion, when it raised $450M this past fall.
CHART TIME | A Bidding War for Delivery Hero?
Uber’s gambit to snap up Delivery Hero is looking increasingly complicated… and expensive! Saudi Arabian q-commerce startup Ninja is reportedly interested in throwing its hat in the ring as well, as it eyes DH’s HungerStation and Talabat assets. Uber’s current offer values Delivery Hero at around €12B, which is about where the stock trades today, while others think the conglomerate could fetch as much as €17 billion.
AI | Gopuff’s Grok-Powered AI Ordering Scrambles Brands
Gopuff is getting into the AI-assisted ordering craze, with the launch of Go. Not only can shoppers chat with the Grok-powered bot, asking for say “gluten-free, low calorie snacks,” the Go experience offers a TikTok-style shopping feed. Go will pull data from Twitter (X,) assessing what’s trending both on a local and worldwide basis: if there’s a big basketball game happening, the tool might suggest snacks primed for watching the match-up.
The Big Picture: This tool was co-developed by Gopuff and SpaceXAI, the Elon Musk-helmed tech giant that’s bragged about how its AI tools are much cheaper than those offered by the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. But a quick perusal of the landing page shows AI hallucinations that would make the branding (or legal) departments at any deliverer’s CPG partners instantly tense up. Those Pampers you’re looking at? Evidently they’re “Promtrician recommended.” The packaging on that iconic ketchup and beer isn’t quite right, and the example shopping cart features a SKU labeled “Product title that can be two lines long.” Who’s hungry for slop?!
A Few Good Links
Meet Chipotlai Max: the open-source AI project that lets you code using various restaurant and retail chains’ chatbots’ LLM tokens. Instacart Caper Carts head to Weis Markets. IC partners with Vida Health on Fresh Funds. FirstClub raises $25M for healthier instant delivery in India. Grubhub partners with Eater, Beli, Alexa+ and Bilt. DoorDash adds ad tools, pushes beyond in-app; Wolt talks ad improvements as well. Chipotle targets international growth. Chick-fil-A opens Miami CloudKitchens location. Trucking jobs fall in May. Deliveroo adds SevenRooms-powered reservations in United Arab Emirates. Shipt introduces Kits: pre-bundled orders. Just Eat Takeaway integrates ordering into WhatsApp. Delivery Hero pushes greener deliveries. Chinese autonomous delivery van startup Neolix heads to Singapore. Wingstop launches loyalty program. Bolt Send begins courier services across Europe. Amazon’s Vulcan robot gains sense of touch. PepsiCo expands Gatik autonomous trucking partnership. Dollar General sales climb 3.4%, as MyDG Delivery takes off. Walmart+ heads to Canada.
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