The serial entrepreneur behind Quidsi ($545M exit to Amazon) and Jet.com ($3.3B exit to Walmart) has raised $650M at a $9B valuation for Wonder instead of pursuing another early sale, signalling plans for a public market debut.
Wonder now combines 140 food halls, Grubhub, Blue Apron, kitchen automation and a new Zipline drone delivery partnership, creating an end-to-end platform that controls everything from meal preparation to last-mile fulfilment.
The funding includes an investor protection ratchet clause tied to the IPO price, follows reports that Wonder missed its initial $11B valuation target.
Marc Lore has spent his career knowing exactly when to sell. He sold Quidsi, the parent of Diapers.com, to Amazon for $545 million in 2011. He sold Jet.com to Walmart for $3.3 billion in 2016. Combined, those two exits made him one of the most celebrated deal-makers in US e-commerce. Now, for the first time, he is refusing to follow the same script and the $650 million his food technology platform Wonder just raised at a $9 billion pre-money valuation is the clearest signal yet of how seriously he means it.
The round had strong participation from returning investors Accel, GV, and NEA, joined by new backers AllianceBernstein, ARK Invest, and Kayne Anderson Rudnick. Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and J.P. Morgan served as placement agents. Lore told Fortune that Wonder is “ready and prepared to go public early next year”, a sharper timeline than the Q1 2028 target he had previously stated publicly, and consistent with reports that he has written March 31, 2027 on the whiteboards in Wonder’s Midtown Manhattan office as the IPO-ready date.
