Why DoorDash CEO Tony Xu is in a hurry to see more grocery e-commerce, but pragmatic about AI's speed to delivery

The importance of online delivery has never been higher, magnified perhaps by the pandemic, but now a critical part of any e-commerce proposition. That places companies like DoorDash in a highly advantageous position and, argues CEO Tony Xu, is a catalyst for change in how commerce operates in 2026:

For at least a decade, you can argue companies like Google or Apple and many other large platforms were top-of-funnel drivers to a lot of different commerce platforms, ours included. Take, for example, Google Food Ordering, which allowed you to order through various Google channels, whether it's Google Maps, Google Search, in which you can order restaurant delivery. That started in the mid-2010s, and it went for about eight years before they shut it down, where you could order delivery from any one of these Google surfaces.

So why shut it down? Xu goes on:

From a traffic perspective, they ...