Sources: FTC is reviewing Uber's partnership with delivery startup Gopuff and purchase of alcohol delivery firm Drizly on anti-competitive grounds
The Information :
Context & Ripple Effects
Uber closed its $1.1B cash-and-stock purchase of Drizly just months before this report, keeping co-founder Cory Rellas on, and layered a Gopuff partnership on top as it pushed deeper into alcohol and convenience delivery. The FTC now reportedly views both arrangements through an antitrust lens, making this one of the first federal challenges to Uber's delivery roll-up strategy.
The scrutiny fits a pattern that kept growing: the same agency later sanctioned Drizly for privacy abuses, Uber ultimately shut Drizly down after three years of nominal independence, and Taiwan's competition authority went further still, blocking Uber's Foodpanda acquisition outright.
First-order effects
- Uber faces a live antitrust review of two pillars of its alcohol-and-convenience delivery expansion at once, threatening both the Gopuff partnership terms and the defensibility of the Drizly deal.
- Gopuff gains leverage in any renegotiation, since a partner under federal review is a weaker counterparty for exclusivity or data-sharing arrangements.
Second-order effects
- Other jurisdictions take the cue: Taiwan's FTC later blocks Uber's $950M Foodpanda acquisition on the same concentration logic, signaling that Uber's consolidation playbook meets resistance abroad even where US review stalls.
- Delivery rivals can position themselves as the competitive alternative in testimony and lobbying, raising Uber's regulatory cost on every subsequent deal.
Third-order effects
- The episode foreshadows a structural shift where large platforms' serial tuck-in acquisitions get pre-cleared less often, forcing buyers like Uber toward partnerships, minority stakes, or organic builds instead of outright ownership.
- Uber's own history sharpens the lesson: the deal under review ended with the asset shut down rather than integrated, so antitrust risk compounds with execution risk when acquirers buy adjacent categories.
The trend: Competition authorities are moving from accepting platform acquisitions of adjacent delivery assets to actively reviewing them, with Uber's Drizly and Gopuff arrangements as early test cases.