Amazon invests in Deliveroo to fend off Uber

Amazon is going to invest hundreds of millions in meal delivery service Deliveroo, as the latter looks for half a billion euros in fresh capital to deal with Uber.

Avoid Uber?

Deliveroo wants to use the fresh capital to recruit new IT employees, to expand into new markets and to develop new products. The majority of the money has already been found at Amazon: Jeff Bezos’ company takes a stake of several hundred million in the meal delivery company, although it is not known exactly how much the online giant is investing.

Amazon is taking the lead in the new capital round, which was started after competitor Uber made a failed acquisition attempt on Deliveroo last year. The takeover talks would have turned out to be unsuccessful as Uber (the company behind rival Uber Eats) seems to have had a very different estimate of the market value of Deliveroo.

Amazon Restaurants quit

In fact, Amazon buys into a competitor as it also has a similar service called Amazon Restaurants, which also delivers restaurant meals to Amazon Prime members within the hour in selected American cities. That service will be limited to the United States for the time being, after a failed test in the United Kingdom..

Doug Gurr, head of Amazon UK, says he was “impressed” by Deliveroo’s approach. Deliveroo founder Will Shu responded in kind and said Amazon was an inspiration for him, and that he looked forward to experiencing its organisation which is “obsessed with its customers”.