April 5: Repricing Instacart

Source: Bloomberg and Benedict Evans
Published: March 2022 and March 2022

Repricing Instacart

Instacart decided to change its internal valuation from $39 billion to $24 billion (-38%).

As a private company, Instacart is only occasionally valued when fund-raising. The company’s value change reflects this year’s ~50% crash in most public tech valuations and is a move representatives say “will help the company attract talent.”

Leadership hopes the move will boost recruiting and retention efforts by aligning new equity awards with the updated valuation. Voluntarily lowering its valuation is an unusual move for a startup and a rare admission that a company got ahead of itself.

The company has more than $1 billion in cash and marketable securities and doesn’t need to raise more capital.

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