Thamer bin Fahd al-Saeed

We are accustomed to reading about acquisitions as a race for increased market share or geographical expansion, but some deals go beyond that to announce a transformation in the nature of the sector itself. This is reflected in Uber's acquisition of Delivery Hero, which values the German company at about 13 billion euros ($14.8 billion), at 41.50 euros per share. If completed after expected regulatory approvals in the second half of 2027, it would create the largest food delivery platform outside China, operating in 99 countries, with a combined order value of nearly $236 billion according to 2025 data.

Despite the enormous size of the deal, Uber is not acquiring restaurants or delivery fleets, but rather buying something more valuable: a broad user base, accumulated behavioral data, and an operational network spanning dozens of markets. The real asset in the platform economy is no longer the car, the bike, or even the restaurant, but the user who opens the app daily, and the data generated with every purchase.

Herein lies the real transformation. When the sharing economy emerged more than a decade ago, it was based on the idea of utilizing unused assets: a private car, a home, or free time for someone wanting to work. The platform was merely an intermediary connecting two parties. Today, however, the platform has become the market itself, managing the relationship between all parties, determining the order of restaurant appearances, pricing mechanisms, driver incentives, and targeted offers to each customer, based on billions of data points flowing daily.

This gives large companies a competitive advantage that is hard to rival, known economically as 'network effects.' Each new customer attracts more restaurants, and each new restaurant improves the customer experience, leading to more orders, better driver distribution efficiency, and lower operating costs, creating a continuous loop. Over time, the largest competitor is not only the most efficient but also the hardest to compete against, even without exercising monopoly in the traditional sense.

Therefore, the valuation of these companies no longer depends solely on their current profits, but on their future ability to retain users, increase average spending, and add new services within the same app: from transportation to food, from groceries to payments and subscriptions. Each new service reduces the cost of acquiring the customer for the next service, which explains investors' willingness to pay billions of dollars for these platforms.

At the local level, the significance of the deal lies not only in the transfer of ownership of 'HungerStation' to the global Uber umbrella, but also in its potential impact on the competitive structure of a market that is witnessing the entry of strong players such as Jahez and Keeta alongside HungerStation. In the near term, consumers may benefit from better technology and more offers thanks to economies of scale, but in the longer term, the role of regulators in maintaining fair competition will become more important, ensuring that data power and network size do not become barriers to entry for new competitors or weaken the bargaining power of restaurants and drivers. True competition in the future will not be about delivery speed, but about who owns the gateway to the customer.

Perhaps this is the most important message of the deal. The sharing economy is no longer about sharing assets as it was when it emerged, but has become about owning the platform that manages that sharing. And here arises the most important economic question: when a single platform can manage demand, direct consumers, collect data, and link transportation, food, and commerce in one app, are we still looking at a sharing economy that expands choices? Or have we moved to a new stage, where monopoly is a natural result of network size, not asset size?

CEO of Investment at BLME