Investors are salivating over the potential for new startups that could do for food what Uber did for taxis.
Blue Apron, a fast-growing startup that delivers recipes and ingredients for home-cooked meals on a weekly basis, announced Tuesday that it has raised $135 million in funding to invest in suppliers and fulfillment operations to boost its delivery abilities nationwide.
The funding values Blue Apron at $2 billion, according to a spokesperson for the startup, which makes the food-delivery startup a "unicorn" in Silicon Valley terms.
Delivery Hero, an online food ordering service popular outside the U.S., this week announced raising $110 million at a $3.1 billion valuation.
The financing was led by Fidelity Investments, a large money manager that has also invested in billion-dollar startups like Uber and Pinterest. The investment comes amid mounting interest from private and institutional investors looking for the next Uber-sized opportunity on the private market, ensuring that a not-quite-three-year-old business like Blue Apron could raise a large sum of money previously only available in a public offering.
"Our mission is to make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone. This financing will allow us to further improve the efficiency of our model," Matt Salzberg, CEO and cofounder of Blue Apron, said in a statement.
To date, Blue Apron has raised nearly $200 million.
Other U.S.-based meal delivery startups like Munchery, Sprig and Kitchensurfing have each raised tens of millions of funding recently.
"What we look for are things people need multiple times a day," Shervin Pishevar, an early investor in Uber and investor in Munchery through his firm Sherpa Ventures, told Mashable in an earlier interview. "Our prediction was the next Uber-like success would come out of the food market."
This week, Pishevar elaborated on the market opportunity for food startups like Munchery in a post on Medium.