Postmates and DoorDash have discussed a merger that would unite two of the largest restaurant-delivery startups in the U.S. in a bid to take on better-funded competitors like GrubHub, Uber and Amazon, multiple sources have told Recode.
The CEOs of both companies — DoorDash’s Tony Xu and Postmates’ Bastian Lehmann — have discussed a potential deal at least once in person in the last year, these people said. Lehmann was optimistic enoughat some point in the last year that he expressed confidence in a private conversation that a merger would happen, according to one source.