Uber wants to own the biggest food delivery network on earth, and it's paying $14.8 billion to get there.
Uber confirmed on July 16 that it has made a formal takeover offer for Delivery Hero, the Berlin-based delivery company behind Talabat, PedidosYa, Foodpanda and Baemin. The price is 41.50 euros in cash for every share. The Wall Street Journal reported that the deal values Delivery Hero at about $14.8 billion, with both of Delivery Hero's boards backing the offer and planning to recommend it to shareholders.
This is not a hostile raid. Uber has spent months working its way into the company, and the numbers show how much of the fight has already been settled. According to the Financial Times, the transaction gives Uber control of about 53% of Delivery Hero when its existing position and committed shares are counted, including support from Prosus. That's not nothing. Once a buyer has the board and a major shareholder lined up, the argument shifts from whether the target can resist to whether regulators will let the deal close.
The combined company would operate in 99 markets, according to Uber's investor materials, with pro forma gross bookings of $236 billion for 2025. That's a lot of ground. Uber also says the deal nearly doubles the number of countries where it can offer both mobility and delivery under one roof, from 34 markets today to 58. The prize is not one app icon on a phone. It is density, riders, restaurant contracts and local brands in places where Uber Eats never fully became the default.
Regulators Get The Hard Part
Here's the complication. Uber and Delivery Hero already compete head to head in several European markets, including Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Regulators tend to notice when a merger removes a direct competitor instead of just adding scale. You should expect them to look closely here, because food delivery has already been through years of consolidation, losses, layoffs and retreat from markets that looked attractive during the pandemic boom.
Delivery Hero is trying to solve part of that problem before regulators force the issue. The company has agreed to sell operations in 14 markets to SSW Partners, a New York investment firm, for roughly 1.4 billion euros, or about $1.6 billion. The Financial Times reported that the carve-out includes Turkey's Yemeksepeti and 13 other markets. Uber will not control the businesses SSW acquires. SSW says it will run an independent process to find long-term strategic partners for those operations.
That structure is neat on paper. It may not be enough. European regulators have already shown that they are willing to push hard on delivery platforms, and Delivery Hero is not coming into this deal with a clean regulatory story. In June 2025, the European Commission fined Delivery Hero and Glovo a combined 329 million euros over an antitrust cartel case involving no-poach conduct and commercially sensitive information. That history does not kill Uber's deal. It does make the review less casual.
Uber and Delivery Hero are targeting a close in the second half of 2027. That is an eighteen-month runway. Companies do not build that much time into a deal calendar unless they know the questions will be serious.
Uber Is Buying Density
Step back and this looks like Uber finishing a job it started years ago. Building delivery density from scratch is slow and expensive. You need couriers on the road, restaurants under contract, consumer habits already formed - and enough order volume to make the whole machine work. Delivery Hero has all of that in markets where Uber Eats has been weaker, including parts of the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
Frankly, that is the real deal. Uber is not paying nearly $15 billion because it likes another company's brand portfolio. It is buying a map that would take years to draw by itself. Talabat matters in the Middle East. Baemin matters in South Korea. PedidosYa matters across Latin America. Foodpanda still has recognition in Asia. Put those assets beside Uber's ride-hailing base and the strategy is plain enough.
For Delivery Hero, the calculation is different. The company has spent years trying to turn a scattered international footprint into consistent profit, market by market, while also absorbing regulatory pressure and investor impatience. An acquisition at 41.50 euros a share gives shareholders a cleaner exit than another long stretch of restructuring. It also ends a chapter for a company that helped define the global food delivery land rush and then had to live with the economics after the cheap-money years ended.
Financially, Uber says the deal will be accretive to non-GAAP earnings per share as soon as it closes, and high single-digit percentage accretive by the third year. Investors will hear that line for what it is: a promise that integration will not swallow the upside. Maybe it won't. But the operational challenge is real, because a delivery network is not just a spreadsheet of markets. It is pricing, courier supply, restaurant relationships and local rules, every day.
Delivery Hero shareholders still need to decide whether 41.50 euros a share is enough. With Prosus committed and both boards on side, that vote looks closer to a formality than a fight. The fight now belongs to competition authorities in Brussels and beyond.
Also read: Jensen Huang Bets Japan Becomes Nvidia's Next Sovereign AI and Robotics Powerhouse • Senra Systems Raises $65 Million to Drag Wire Harnesses Out of the Cold War • Japan just cut its crypto tax from 55 percent to a flat 20 percent
