Instacart, the home grocery delivery service that launched back in 2012, is close to raising a massive Series C round of funding north of $100 million, according to sources. The raise will value the startup at $2 billion, or more than quadruple the $400 million valuation of its Series B financing from June.
Including this round, Instacart has raised a total of $154.8 million with other investors that include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Khosla Ventures, Canaan Partners, Y Combinator boss Sam Altman and Box founder Aaron Levie.
We’re still working on verifying the lead investor, but at this time, sources indicate that Kleiner Perkins is in the driver’s seat. We heard rumors that KPCB took a look at Instacart during its last fund raise, which was led by Andreessen Horowitz instead.
Instacart launched two years ago to become the Uber of grocery delivery. Users choose a grocery store, shop for items, and get on-demand delivery of those items within an hour, either from their phones or the company’s website.
It’s an idea that has caught on with consumers, and Instacart has been growing rapidly over the last year. As of June 2014, Instacart was operational in 10 cities across the United States, showing 15x revenue growth. Given two huge cash infusions and the spiked valuation, it’s fair to imagine it will continue to grow aggressively.
But so does the competitive landscape.
A number of services offer an alternative to Instacart, though the SF-based startup does seem to have the lead with regards to newer companies.
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FreshDirect has been around for quite some time, though doesn’t offer the same immediacy as Instacart. Meanwhile, everything-on-demand services like WunWun function rather well as an instant grocery delivery service. Plus, Amazon is throwing its hat into the ring with AmazonFresh, which has already launched in a few big markets.
That said, investors have been pouring a huge amount of funding into startups showing high growth. The biggest is Uber, which just announced it closed an additional $1.2 billion in funding at a $40 billion valuation. Stripe also raised $70 million in a recent deal that values it at $3.5 billion.
We reached out to Instacart and Kleiner Perkins, but haven’t heard anything back at the time of publishing. We’ll update you if we do.
