The Value in goPuff
Philadelphia-born startup goPuff announced Tuesday that it
raised $1.2 billion in funding at a valuation of $8.9 billion. For those of you who haven’t experienced the mobile convenience store’s services, I’ll break it down. It’s Tuesday night, you’re cooking dinner, but alas, no garbage bags. There’s a 0% chance you’re leaving the house at that point – goPuff saves the day with garbage bags delivered to your door.
Available in roughly 650 U.S. cities, goPuff delivers a variety of products from shampoo to hard seltzer in under 30 minutes while charging a flat $1.95 delivery fee.
The valuation comes at a time when food delivery continues to flourish. In fact, goPuff
reported that its order volume increased 400% in the first half of 2020 amid the beginning of the pandemic.
Peloton Embraces Voice
Peloton has acquired California-based
Aiqudo, an AI-based technology that connects voice computing to the mobile app ecosystem. Bloomberg reported that the company also acquired
Atlas Wearables Inc. and
Otari late last year. One of the main gadgets Peleton plans to utilize is Aiquodo’s “Voice To Action” product that helps businesses build their own custom voice experiences. The deals could help Peleton augment their already beefed-up tech to the point where Equinox might be shaking in their expensive biking shoes.
While we’re not too sure how much the deal ran the company, Peloton said it paid a total of $78.1 million in cash for Atlas Wearables, Otari, and Peerfit, a digital health company, at the end of last year. It makes sense that Peloton is pouring love and cash into their product, considering the fact that health and fitness equipment revenue more than doubled, to $2.3 billion in 2020, from March to October, you can probably guess why. Not to mention, according to The Washington Post,
sales of treadmills soared 135% while those of stationary bikes nearly tripled.
If you’re interested in some further reading about voice tech, we did a
white paper on that very subject back in 2019.
