Delivery Hero's Talabat valued at €9 billion while Uber bids for the company and DoorDash circles MENA assets

By Mo

Published: 2026-05-25T20:44:20.000Z

Delivery Hero's board is now considering a complete breakup of the company. The breakup would spin off the Middle East division as a separate entity. Korea would be spun off separately. The remaining Delivery Hero would focus on Latin America, Asia, and other regions. A breakup would allow each regional asset to be valued and sold independently.

Delivery Hero is in breakup talks. Uber wants to buy the entire company for over €10 billion. The board said no. DoorDash wants to buy only the Middle East business. Shareholders want €13 billion if Uber is serious about the whole company. The math no longer works for keeping the company together. The story starts with one region that works and 67 that don't. Talabat, the food delivery platform operating across the Gulf, is the only Delivery Hero asset that makes real money. The company valued Talabat's 80 percent stake at up to €9 billion. Everything else Delivery Hero owns in 68 countries combined is worth maybe €4 billion. That gap is why the company is being torn apart. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber's CEO, flew to Oslo this week to personally pitch Uber's €10 billion offer to the Delivery Hero board chair. It was a direct message from one founder to the board of another founder's company. The message was rejected. Shareholders came back and said they want €13 billion. Uber is preparing a higher bid. DoorDash is taking a different approach entirely. DoorDash does not want to buy Delivery Hero. DoorDash wants to buy Talabat from Delivery Hero. The company told the board that it is only interested in the Middle East business. DoorDash has presence in food delivery globally but has never cracked the Middle East market the way it dominates in North America. Talabat is already there. Talabat is already dominant. That is worth more to DoorDash than fighting Uber for the entire company. This is the reckoning for Niklas Östberg, Delivery Hero's founder. He spent 15 years building a company that claimed market leadership in 53 of 68 countries. He built it by acquisition. He built it with debt and capital. He promised that global scale would produce global returns. He was forced out by the board three weeks ago. Now he is watching his company get dismantled and sold in pieces. The stock tells the story of what went wrong. In 2021, Delivery Hero stock traded at €177 per share. Today it trades at €23.52. That is an 87 percent collapse. Shareholders have lost billions. The board looked at Delivery Hero's operations across 68 countries and found that the company was operating at the lowest margins of any competitor. Uber has higher margins. DoorDash has higher margins. Grab has higher margins. Meituan has higher margins. Delivery Hero operated in more countries than all of them combined but made less money per order. The strategic review that the board announced in December 2025 confirmed what shareholders suspected. Delivery Hero only generates consistent profits in the Middle East. Everywhere else is bleeding capital. That realization triggered the board's decision to consider a breakup. A breakup would mean spinning off the Middle East business, spinning off Korea, and keeping the rest as a separate entity. Each piece would have a different valuation. Each piece would be sold to a different buyer. That approach maximizes shareholder value. Talabat is the reason for all of this. The GCC food delivery platform has market leadership. It has profitability. It has growth. Talabat dominates the way Delivery Hero never did globally. That dominance is why DoorDash is interested and why shareholders value it at €9 billion. In a breakup scenario, DoorDash would likely acquire Talabat. The company would become a DoorDash regional asset. That regional asset would be worth more as part of DoorDash than it is as part of Delivery Hero. HungerStation, Delivery Hero's Saudi Arabia quick commerce play, is a different story. Delivery Hero paid $298 million for HungerStation in 2023. The company was supposed to be the next big thing. Quick commerce was supposed to be the growth category. Instead, the category collapsed. Nana is restructuring. Careem left the market. Rabbit disappeared. HungerStation survives but is competing against Keeta, which has Meituan's backing, and against aggregators that are consolidating the market. In a breakup scenario, HungerStation would be spun off separately or sold. It is no longer a crown jewel. For the GCC, the implications are real. Talabat is not just a business. Talabat is what people use to order food. Talabat is the dominant platform across the region. If DoorDash acquires Talabat, the question for merchants and customers is what changes. Does DoorDash's global integration make Talabat better or worse? Does local focus continue or does Talabat become just another DoorDash region? Those questions matter to the millions of customers using Talabat daily. The founder is gone. The company is being broken apart. The vision of global dominance has become a story of regional monetization. Shareholders are getting what they demanded. The pieces of Delivery Hero will be sold to the highest bidders. Talabat to DoorDash. HungerStation spun off or sold. The rest distributed to whoever wants it. By the end of 2026, Delivery Hero as a unified company will cease to exist.