Uber Technologies, Inc. (UBER.US), a global leader in ride-hailing and delivery services, has acquired shares in German food delivery leader Delivery Hero SE from Aspex Management, increasing its total stake to 36.83%. This move comes as Uber is focusing its resources on negotiating a significant acquisition of the German platform. For Uber's recent strategic vision of a "fully autonomous AI-driven system, exemplified by Robotaxis and drone delivery, integrated with a global delivery service platform," Delivery Hero represents more than a simple acquisition target. It serves as a commercial amplifier for global order density, merchant networks, and local fulfillment scenarios.
In a regulatory filing on Wednesday, Delivery Hero stated that Uber has significantly increased the voting rights associated with its shareholding to 24.99%, with the remaining shares held as financial instruments. This level remains below the threshold that would trigger a mandatory takeover offer. According to sources familiar with the matter, Uber's latest payment was slightly below €40 per share. The individuals requested anonymity as the information is not yet public.
This development follows Uber's submission of a takeover offer at €33 per share, which Delivery Hero disclosed on Saturday. That offer valued the Berlin-based company at approximately €100 billion ($116 billion) and provided no premium over its recent share price. Under German law, any acquirer that establishes a voting rights threshold of 30% or more triggers an obligation to make a mandatory offer, a level Uber has not yet reached. If Uber intends to continue purposefully increasing its stake, it will likely require antitrust approvals in multiple markets where Delivery Hero operates.
Uber's increase of its Delivery Hero stake to nearly 37%, combined with its recent expansion in Robotaxi autonomous mobility and drone delivery, positions this transaction as a key component of its "AI-driven urban mobility and delivery platform" strategy. Aspex had previously advocated for Delivery Hero to sell core assets and successfully pushed for the removal of co-founder and CEO Niklas Östberg. The Hong Kong-based activist investor had complained that Delivery Hero, operating in dozens of countries, was severely undervalued compared to peers due to its exposure to diverse competitive dynamics and legal regulations across too many markets.
Prior to this transaction, Uber was already one of Delivery Hero's largest shareholders. The company disclosed earlier this month that it held nearly 20% of the shares and held options for an additional 5.6%. Prosus NV was previously the largest investor in Delivery Hero, holding another 17% of the shares. The European Union had required Prosus to divest most of its stake by August to obtain antitrust approval for its acquisition of another food delivery platform, Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway.com NV. Sources indicate Prosus has requested the EU withdraw this requirement to avoid being forced into a large-scale sale during negotiations. Prosus NV is the largest shareholder of Tencent and a long-term technology-focused investment giant. Just Eat Takeaway.com is a Dutch online food ordering and delivery platform founded in 2000, connecting consumers with restaurants via its website and mobile apps.
Delivery Hero SE, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, is a global local delivery platform. Its core businesses include food delivery, instant retail, and grocery/convenience item delivery, with brands like foodpanda, talabat, Yemeksepeti, and PedidosYa covering multiple regional markets. Its value extends beyond being a "food delivery platform"; it represents a global delivery infrastructure with a vast merchant network, rider/delivery network, user order data, payment relationships, instant fulfillment capabilities, and local operational licenses. The company's 2025 performance showed its quick commerce Gross Transaction Value grew over 30%, exceeding €7.5 billion, indicating an evolution from traditional restaurant delivery towards a "daily consumption gateway."
Uber's persistent pursuit of acquiring Delivery Hero is driven, in part, by the global food delivery industry entering a new phase of consolidation. Acquisitions like DoorDash's purchase of Deliveroo and Prosus's acquisition of Just Eat Takeaway demonstrate that the industry now rewards cross-regional scale, platform traffic, merchant density, delivery density, and capital efficiency over small-scale growth in single markets. Uber's own food/grocery instant delivery platform, Uber Eats, is strong in the US, Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia-Pacific. However, Delivery Hero possesses deep networks in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and parts of Europe. Acquiring Delivery Hero would allow Uber to expand its dual-sided "mobility + delivery" platform into a more global, AI-powered super-network encompassing "urban mobility + local delivery + instant retail"—an "AI technology-driven urban mobility and autonomous delivery platform."
Aligned with Uber's recently unveiled vision for a "fully autonomous system (represented by Robotaxis and drone delivery) + global delivery service platform," Delivery Hero is not merely a merger target but an amplifier for global order density, merchant networks, and local fulfillment scenarios. A key challenge for commercializing autonomous driving is having the technology without sufficient order density to amortize fixed costs. Food delivery, grocery, and instant retail orders are naturally high-frequency, short-distance, standardized, and schedulable, making them ideal for the gradual replacement of human delivery by Robotaxis, delivery robots, and drones. Delivery Hero has already tested robot grocery delivery in Sweden and South Korea and launched drone food delivery in Stockholm, aligning closely with Uber's autonomous delivery strategy.
For Uber, Delivery Hero's significance is closer to a "demand-side foundation for the future automated delivery network"—the necessary base of demand for the commercialization of future autonomous taxis, unmanned delivery robots, drone delivery, and intelligent dispatch systems. Autonomous taxis address passenger mobility, while autonomous delivery addresses goods movement; both fundamentally rely on high-frequency order dispatch, route planning, supply-demand matching, pricing systems, fleet/robot operations, city-level regulatory interfaces, and local fulfillment networks.
Uber has recently re-accelerated its autonomous ecosystem strategy, launching an autonomous solutions business and partnering with companies like Nuro, Lucid, Rivian, MOIA, and Hertz to advance robotaxis, autonomous fleet operations, and delivery scenarios. In official statements, Uber has explicitly identified autonomous vehicles, sidewalk delivery robots, and drones as future methods to reduce delivery costs for Uber Eats.
Should this transaction proceed successfully, Uber's grand investment narrative would evolve from a "ride-hailing and food delivery platform" to an "AI-based global urban automated logistics operating platform." Short-term risks involve regulatory approvals, German mandatory offer rules, EU antitrust scrutiny, the complexity of Delivery Hero's multi-market operations, and integration costs. However, in the medium to long term, Uber's true pursuit is unifying mobility orders, food orders, grocery orders, and future autonomous forces like Robotaxis and drones into a single AI-powered super-dispatch network.
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