DoorDash signs three-year Live Nation ANZ partnership. DoorDash is moving deeper into live music through a three-year deal spanning Live Nation concerts, festivals and venues. DoorDash has signed a three-year strategic partnership with Live Nation Australia and New Zealand, expanding the delivery platform's presence across concerts, festivals and live music venues. The deal names DoorDash as an official partner across Live Nation's ANZ portfolio, with the partnership spanning fan offers, festival activations and post-event promotions. DoorDash heads into live music. As part of the partnership, DoorDash will introduce music-related perks for customers and launch the DoorDash Food Village at major festivals. The on-ground hospitality activation is designed to give the brand direct access to festival audiences, while DoorDash will also use Live Nation's venue network to deliver offers and promotions to fans leaving shows. DoorDash vice president APAC Simon Rossi said the deal would allow the company to extend its presence beyond its core delivery business. "Our customers have a real passion for live entertainment, and partnering with Live Nation gives us an exciting opportunity to show up for them beyond the everyday. Live music brings people together around moments they genuinely care about, and we want DoorDash to be part of making those experiences even better. From our presence at some of Australia and New Zealand's biggest festivals to connecting with fans around the live event experience, we're excited to bring DoorDash closer to the artists, events and cultural moments our customers love." Live Nation points to loyalty opportunity. Live Nation ANZ senior vice president and head of media and sponsorship Kristy Rosser said live music offered brands an opportunity to connect with audiences through shared experiences. The leading media trade publication in Australia. "Live music creates unforgettable cultural moments, bringing people together through shared experiences and emotion. For brands, it's a powerful opportunity to connect with fans in more meaningful ways, with recent data showing 91% of Australian live music fans would sign up for or switch loyalty programs to access live music perks alone. "We look forward to partnering with DoorDash to create authentic connections with diverse fan communities throughout the live music experience." The figure comes from May 2026 research involving 2,300 respondents. DoorDash said customers can access upcoming perks and exclusive offers through its app.

Circana and DoorDash partner to validate incremental sales for CPG brands. September 02, 2026 09:05 ET | Source: Circana Chicago, Sept. 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Circana LLC, a leader in turning consumer data into growth, and DoorDash, a global leader in local commerce, today announced a partnership to bring independent, third-party validation to DoorDash's measurement capabilities. Now available to select advertisers for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, the collaboration gives consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands a trusted, objective view of the true incremental business impact of their advertising on DoorDash. Why Independent Measurement Matters The partnership addresses a growing need in retail media. With the rise of retail media networks, marketers require standardized measurement frameworks to guide real budget decisions. Through Circana's independent measurement approach, DoorDash advertisers can connect media exposure to actual purchase behavior across a broad retail footprint, helping confirm whether advertising creates genuine incremental demand and attracts new buyers. How DoorDash Reaches Incremental Buyers New findings from DoorDash measurement illustrate the platform's incremental value. An overlap analysis of buyers of measured brands showed that 76% purchased in store only, 13% purchased on DoorDash only, and 10% purchased through both channels.* Among the buyers who purchased on DoorDash, 56% bought exclusively on DoorDash. These results provide proof that DoorDash drives incremental demand by reaching shoppers whose brands are not otherwise reaching in store. Early measurement results underscore the value of that incremental reach. A major beverage company saw $0.59 in incremental sales per household through DoorDash, three times the Circana Beverage Benchmark. "As retail media matures, most networks offer incrementality solutions for their own ecosystem, but marketers also need measurement they can compare and contrast across networks," said Lindsay Pullins, senior vice president of Retail Media at Circana. "As a best in class for independent third-party validation, Circana grounds every result in real purchase behavior. This partnership gives marketers a clear, objective view of the incremental sales and new buyer growth their DoorDash investments create." "At DoorDash, we are investing in measurement solutions that help brands understand the business impact of their media with greater clarity and confidence," said Katie Daleo, general manager of CPG Ads at DoorDash. "By adding trusted, independent validation from Circana, we are strengthening the value we provide advertisers and helping them further measure what matters most: understanding the DoorDash consumer in the context of total market and contextualizing the impact of their DoorDash investments." *Based on Circana analysis of buyers of measured brands during an eight-week campaign on DoorDash, between 11/10/25 and 1/4/2026 in the U.S. About Circana Circana is a leader in providing technology, AI, and data to fast-moving consumer packaged goods companies, durables manufacturers, and retailers seeking to optimize their businesses. Circana's predictive analytics and technology empower clients to measure their market share, understand the underlying consumer behavior driving it, and accelerate their growth. Circana's Liquid Data(R) technology platform is powered by an expansive, high-quality data set and intelligent algorithms trained on six decades of domain expertise. With Circana, clients can take immediate action to future-proof and evolve their growth strategies amid an increasingly complex, fast-paced, and ever-changing economy. Learn more at circana.com. About DoorDash DoorDash (NASDAQ: DASH) is one of the world's leading local commerce platforms that helps businesses of all kinds grow and innovate, connects consumers to the best of their neighborhoods, and gives people fast, flexible ways to earn. Since its founding in 2013, DoorDash has expanded to more than 40 countries, using technology and logistics to shape the future of local commerce and broaden access to opportunity. With a growing international presence that now includes Deliveroo and Wolt, DoorDash combines global scale with local expertise to serve communities around the world.

TechCrunch Mobility: The hidden human cost of robotaxis. Kirsten Korosec Sun, August 30, 2026 at 9:03 AM PDT Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free - just click TechCrunch Mobility! Proponents of autonomous vehicle technology have long argued that robotaxis and other self-driving vehicles will reduce crash incidents and make roads safer. And there is some evidence of that. But that doesn't mean there hasn't been a cost to those who are working (or have worked) for the companies developing that tech. Sean O'Kane, senior reporter, special projects, dug into data submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and found that test drivers for Waymo and Zoox sustained more than two dozen injuries in 2024 and 2025 from hard braking or other sudden movements made by the autonomous vehicles. In some cases, these workers were sidelined for months after sustaining injuries like whiplash when the AVs stopped abruptly, and hard. There is one important item to consider. You might ask yourself, well what about the other AV developers? Surely, this isn't a problem isolated to Waymo and Zoox? And you're probably right. It's likely that test drivers for other AV developers are also getting injured, but the companies they work for may be exempt from OSHA's reporting requirements. Got a tip for Incite D on this story or others? Email Kirsten Korosec at [email protected] or my Signal at kkorosec.07, Sean O'Kane at [email protected]. Deals! I've been writing about Gatik, the autonomous vehicle startup known for its self-driving box trucks, since 2019 when it came out of "stealth." At the time, I wasn't sure if the startup would survive. The hype cycle was already chewing up and spitting out AV startups and no one seemed close to commercializing their tech. Gatik has not only survived, but it has also crossed over from R&D lab to commercial operator, albeit at a small-scale compared with traditional human-driven delivery companies. (The company's box trucks are driverless and deliver freight from distribution centers to retails stores like Walmart.) And now, with $200 million in fresh funding, it's pushing to scale. The round was led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies, with participation from Millennium Management, ARK Invest, and Intact Private Capital. This is Gatik's largest funding to date. But I might argue that its multiyear commercial agreement with PepsiCo, which was signed in June and is part of $600 million in contracted revenue, is the bigger deal here. Other deals that got my attention... Airbound, an Indian startup building autonomous drones, raised $37 million in a Series A round led by Greenoaks with participation from DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed, and Humba Ventures. Mubadala Capital, the alternative asset management arm of Mubadala Investment Company, agreed to acquire a majority equity interest in Arrive Logistics, a truckload brokerage based in Austin. Regent Craft, a Rhode Island electric startup developing and manufacturing electric seagliders, raised $120 million in a Series B round co-led by Mare Liberum and AE Ventures. (The seaglider is a class of vehicle called a wing-in-ground effect vehicle, or WIG.) Regent also secured about $120 million debt capital provided by Erebor Bank, which was launched by Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey. One note about Regent, a company I have followed for a while: The startup, which recently completed its 255,000-square-foot seaglider factory, is clearly pushing deeper into the defense sector, probably because there is money and partnerships to be had. Vista Global Holding, a private aviation group based in UAE, is considering a European IPO that could raise more than a $1 billion, Bloomberg reported. Notable reads and other tidbits. Any, an electric two-wheeler startup out of Belgium, is placing a bet on cargo space. General Motors is facing increased scrutiny from U.S. safety regulators after hundreds of incidents, more than 20 crashes or fires, and at least six injuries involving brake problems in its EVs. Ford has hired Dave Carroll as president of the company's energy business. Carroll, who previously worked at ENGIE North America, will succeed long-time executive Lisa Drake. Rivian CFO Claire McDonough is resigning from her position and will leave at the end of October. Her tenure at Rivian came during a tough, and exciting (ahem IPO), period for the company. And her departure comes at another critical moment for Rivian as it takes on some of its biggest projects to date, including the robotaxi deal with Uber and scaling production and sales of its R2 SUV. Uber is launching a new live video streaming feature that will allow parents to keep track of their children during rides. Waymo shared 10 lessons it has learned after its vehicles had driven more than 200 million autonomous miles. The first lesson - that multimodal sensors are indispensable - received the most attention because it is in direct opposition to Tesla's camera-only approach. But there were other lessons that got my attention, including Waymo's promotion of vision language models (an area that is starting to get a lot of attention). Meanwhile, Waymo is making more inroads overseas. The company announced that it plans to launch in Munich, Germany. One more thing... One important clarification on what I wrote about last week. You might recall that Waymo shared information about its custom silicon chip - specifically a 5 nm ASIC chip that is designed to handle the massive influx of raw data before it reaches the core "brain" of the self-driving system. Waymo stated in its blog post: "While these ASICs alone deliver over 1,000 TOPS of ML performance dedicated to front-end processing and ML models, we optimize across the full stack to maximize achieved performance, especially in the low-batch regimes we often operate." That line led me, and others, to believe that its one chip can deliver 1,000 TOPs (trillions of operations per second) of computing performance. I compared it to Nvidia's Drive AGX Thor automotive processor, noting it was about the same performance. But alas, one eagle-eyed reader reached out with some questions, which prompted me to turn to Waymo for official answers. A Waymo spokesperson told me, "It's for the system, not a single chip." That's an important distinction.