(Bloomberg) – Uber Technologies Inc. has agreed to acquire Postmates Inc. in a $ 2.65 billion acquisition that is expected to be announced Monday morning in the US, according to people familiar with the matter.
Uber Eats boss Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty is expected to continue to run Uber’s combined delivery business, according to a person who asked not to be identified discussing a private deal. It is not immediately clear what role, if any, Postmates chief executive Bastian Lehmann will take on after the acquisition.
The acquisition would help Uber gain ground against privately held DoorDash Inc., the current market leader in food delivery in the United States. While Postmates hasn’t kept up with DoorDash, it maintains a strong position in Los Angeles and the American Southwest, which could prove valuable to Uber Eats.
Representatives for Uber and Postmates declined to comment.
The move for Postmates comes immediately after Uber’s failed bid to acquire publicly-traded GrubHub Inc., which was bought by Europe’s Just Eat Takeaway.com NV for $ 7.3 billion. Uber’s board of directors approved the deal, one person said, although plans may still be subject to change.
Uber closed at $ 30.68 on Friday, after rising more than 4% in initial reports of its offer by Postmates.
Founded in 2011, Postmates was one of the first to allow customers in the United States to order meal delivery using a mobile app. However, competition has intensified in recent years and Postmates has fallen to a distant quarter. The company said in February 2019 that it had confidentially submitted documents for an initial public offering, but that it was never made public. It raised private capital last year in a deal that valued the business at $ 2.4 billion.
(Updates with additional background on Postmates in the seventh paragraph)
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