LogTech 08/2026

Welcome back, fellow logistics enthusiasts!

After two months of circling, Uber and Delivery Hero signed in July: €41.50 per share, valuing the Berlin company at €13 billion, with 14 overlapping markets going to a New York investment firm as part of the same deal. We're also covering Tesco and MediaMarktSaturn moving onto delivery platforms, DoorDash earning its own air carrier certificate and building a drone to go with it, and a study asking whether shoppers actually want the AI assistants grocers keep launching.

And as always, you'll find the latest MotionTools release notes at the bottom.

Let's get into it.

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📢 What the industry was up to

🛒 More retailers are listing on delivery platforms

Tesco is launching on Uber Eats and Deliveroo, Uber Eats from August and Deliveroo later in the summer. Its own Whoosh service is doing well, delivering from around 1,800 stores in as little as 20 minutes to roughly 1.5 million customers, with sales up 51% last year. What the platforms add is reach: Whoosh covers more than 70% of the UK population, while Uber Eats puts the number for its own coverage above 90%.

In Germany, MediaMarktSaturn went live on Wolt with around 2,000 electronics items delivered in roughly 35 minutes, starting from 11 stores in Berlin, Frankfurt, Hannover, Cologne, and Munich at the same prices as in store. It's the German counterpart to the Power pilot in Norway from June, and Wolt is direct about the ambition: infrastructure for everyday shopping rather than food delivery.

🤝 Uber and Delivery Hero sign, with 14 markets carved out

Uber agreed to buy Delivery Hero on July 16, offering €41.50 per share in cash and valuing the Berlin company at €13.0 billion, a decent step up from the €33 Uber opened with in May. Prosus has committed to sell its remaining 17% into the offer, which would put Uber's total economic interest at around 53%. Regulators still need to clear the deal, and closing is expected in the second half of 2027.

The deal would nearly double the number of markets where Uber offers both mobility and delivery, from 34 to 58. Not all of Delivery Hero comes along, though. New York investment firm SSW Partners is buying the businesses in 14 overlapping markets for around $1.6 billion, including foodora in Austria, Norway, and Sweden, Glovo in Spain and Poland, and Yemeksepeti in Turkey. SSW plans to look for buyers once the deal closes, so a set of established European delivery brands is heading toward new ownership.

🚁 DoorDash adds drones to its own fleet

DoorDash earned FAA air carrier certification on July 29 and launched DoorDash Air, its own drone program, becoming just the eighth drone operator to hold that certificate. The aircraft is designed in-house at DoorDash Labs, the team behind the Dot sidewalk robot. The reason: more than 20% of DoorDash orders in 2025 traveled three to five miles, and those took roughly 25% longer than shorter ones because matching a Dasher to a mid-range run is harder. Handing that band to drones keeps couriers on the short, dense routes.

🤖 Grocery shopping picks up an AI layer

In Germany, Knuspr launched a ChatGPT integration that lets customers search products, pull together recipes, and build a weekly cart in conversation before switching over to Knuspr to check out. It also reads a photo of a handwritten shopping list. Knuspr calls it one of the first official ChatGPT integrations in Europe, built on parent company Rohlik Group's own Model Context Protocol server, which also lets customers connect the service to other AI tools they already use.

Kroger went live with its own AI Shopping Assistant three weeks later, across every banner site and app. Same handwritten list trick, plus meal plans for the week and carts built to a set budget or dietary restriction.

How much shoppers want this is less settled. A European study from dunnhumby found that under a quarter of 18-to 34-year-olds have used AI tools for grocery shopping, dropping to 4% of over-55s. Price comparison is the most common use at 47%, and in the UK, one of the heaviest-using markets, 39% of shoppers say they don't trust AI. dunnhumby's read is that AI currently sits alongside normal search rather than replacing the shopping trip.

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🤝 Community Update

A few months ago we announced we were rolling out our courier network platform NOW.delivery in Hamburg. Well, it's live, it's growing, and it isn't taking a summer break. Head on over to NOW.delivery to book your first order and get 50% off using the voucher code MAX8X1, valid until 31.08.

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🦾 Shipping better technology for a world in Motion

Feature highlight: Reports

The dashboard has a new Reports section where users find the reports shared with them. Admins upload PDF or CSV files through the API and set visibility per report, sharing with specific roles or individual users. Reports drop out of the list once they expire, and if e-mail notification is enabled, everyone with access is told when a report is ready.