Food delivery giant DoorDash announced the acquisition of Symbiosys, an advertising tech startup founded by a former Google leader and backed by Seattle-area venture capital firm Fuse.
The deal, valued at $175 million, will help boost DoorDash’s off-site advertising capabilities.
Founded in 2022, Symbiosys built software to help retailers sell off-site advertising promoting products from brands — ads that show up in places such as Google search or Instagram.
The deal with Symbiosys will allow DoorDash advertisers, such as global CPG brands and local restaurants, expand their reach into various digital channels outside of DoorDash properties.
Symbiosys rode tailwinds from a growing retail media market that is generating substantial advertising revenue for retailers, driven in part by the success of Amazon’s high-margin ad business.
DoorDash said its ad business last year crossed a $1 billion annualized revenue rate.
Symbiosys previously partnered with DoorDash and Best Buy.
Symbiosys CEO and founder Bashar Kachachi, based in the Seattle area, was a former advertising leader at Google who also spent more than a decade at Microsoft, where he worked on ad-related products.
“We built a platform designed to bring retailers and brands together — enabling collaborative marketing, rich audience targeting, and closed-loop measurement across digital channels,” Kachachi wrote on LinkedIn.
Other execs at Symbiosys include President John Roswech, the former chief revenue officer at Marchex and HookLogic; and engineering leader Dan Cooke, who was previously at Criteo, HookLogic, and WorldQuant.
Symbiosys raised a $9 million Series A round in 2024 led by Bellevue, Wash.-based venture firm Fuse. Other investors include HookLogic co-founder Jonathan Opdyke and Flywheel Digital co-founder Patrick Miller. Scott Friend, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, invested as an individual angel.
The company will continue operating under its own brand, according to Kachachi.
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