Marc Lore has been a successful entrepreneur for many years. His latest venture is a food delivery company called Wonder, which recently revealed that it has raised $700 million.
This funding round included participation from all major existing shareholders, led by NEA, GV, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Forerunner, Alpine, and Harmony, and further investment from Watar Partners. Lore is also personally investing $100 million in this funding round. The new investors in this round also included Dragoneer, Jefferies, Red & Blue Ventures, CAZ Investments, Kuvare Insurance, and Fubon Ventures. The company’s strategic investors also include existing investor Amex Ventures and Nestle’s previously announced strategic investment.
In 2005, Lore co-founded Quidsi (the parent company of Diapers.com) and sold it to Amazon for $545 million in November 2010. In 2014, he founded Jet.com and sold it to Walmart for $3.96 billion in 2016. Lore is also a co-founder of Mojo and Wizard and owns the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx.
Wonder enables customers to order from 30 restaurants and have the meals delivered within 30 minutes, all within one order.
Wonder launched in January 2023 with a location on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Now, the company offers 350 menu items from 30 restaurants.
The funding will be used to continue driving efforts across three distinct levers: expansion, research and development, and driving unit economics.
KEY QUOTES:
“First, we will accelerate the expansion of our physical retail locations, with plans to grow from our current base of 11 locations to 35 by the end of 2024 and 90 by the end of 2025. We’re excited to bring Wonder to more communities throughout the Northeast.”
“Second, we will continue driving culinary innovation by aggressively investing in research and development, including faster cook times, software enhancements, new menu items, new chefs and iconic restaurant partnerships. Customers love features like multi-restaurant ordering and we’ll have many exciting new products and partnerships to talk about soon.”
“And finally, we’ll continue to invest in proprietary technology to drive operational efficiencies across Wonder’s vertically-integrated system: back-end technology to drive down food waste; next gen kitchen designs to improve throughput and consistency; and an enhanced delivery network that will ensure that couriers – and, more importantly, customers’ orders – never wait. “
– Marc Lore
