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How a data and tech strategy fueled DoorDash’s rise

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Good morning. Tony Xu and three fellow Stanford students began developing the idea for DoorDash in late 2012 and officially launched the company in 2013. Twelve years after its founding, DoorDash is the clear U.S. market leader in restaurant delivery, with Xu as CEO leading a data- and tech-fueled, forward-looking trajectory.

DoorDash controls roughly 60% of the U.S. food-delivery market—more than twice the share of its closest rival, Uber Eats. A new Fortune feature by tech correspondent Jason Del Rey, “How DoorDash became a $85 billion behemoth and won the delivery wars,” offers a deep dive into the company.

DoorDash is pursuing expansion both into new retail categories and into additional geographies. Xu showed Del Rey how the company’s in-house-built mapping technology advises Dashers on everything from the optimal place to park near a customer’s door to the specific entrance they should use in a large corporate building. DoorDash leaders believe the data adds up to meaningful advantages in the delivery-app wars.

“[With] all of this data, we are trying to build the catalog for the physical world,” Xu told him. “This repository of information does not exist on Google Maps. It doesn’t exist on ChatGPT.”

Xu’s approach to leadership is being closely watched and admired by his peers, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to Del Rey. Xu serves as a director on Meta’s board.

Some advice for tech leaders: “If you’re in technology and you are not making improvements, you are actually decaying. Until it’s over all of a sudden,” Xu told Del Rey.

There is plenty of risk but also huge opportunity for DoorDash if the company’s meticulous strategy continues to be effective and it can stay ahead of its competitors, according to Del Rey. You can read the complete article here.

The AI engine powering DoorDash’s next phase

DoorDash has experienced a meteoric rise over the past five years and is currently No. 394 on the Fortune 500, after debuting on the list in 2024 at No. 443. When I spoke last year with CFO Ravi Inukonda about the company’s debut, he also pointed to DoorDash’s use of data and technology, noting that the company has built a “very efficient logistics engine” that has been powered by machine learning for the past decade.

A recent report by Klover.ai argues that DoorDash is strategically positioned to sustain dominance in the AI-driven local commerce sector. This is rooted in a self-reinforcing flywheel composed of a vast and proprietary dataset; a purpose-built, high-velocity AI and machine-learning infrastructure designed for rapid iteration; and a deep, holistic integration of AI across every facet of its operations.

Inukonda, who became CFO in March 2023 and has now been with the company for about seven years, also told me that the company has three customers: consumers, merchants, and Dashers. In addition, every quarter, everyone on the leadership team spends a day with merchants.

SherylEstrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Doug Larson has resigned as CFO of Beyond Air, Inc. (Nasdaq: XAIR), a commercial-stage medical device and biopharmaceutical company, to pursue another opportunity.  Larson will continue to serve as CFO through Dec. 5,  and then Duke Drewell, the company’s controller, will serve as interim CFO. Beyond Air has launched a search for a permanent successor. Mr. Larson will serve in an advisory role at the company through the end of the year.

Cheryl Paquete was appointed CFO of Terran Orbital Corporation, transitioning from her previous temporary role.  Paquete brings nearly 20 years of leadership in finance and business operations at Lockheed Martin Space. She most recently led high-value portfolios across Deep Space Exploration, Commercial Satellites, Weather and Earth Science, and advanced development programs.

Big Deal

Mercer’s 2025 National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans found that in 2025, the average cost of employer-sponsored health insurance reached $17,496 per employee, a 6% increase, well above the rate of inflation and wage growth. A sharp rise in prescription drug spending, which increased 9.4% on average among large employers (500 or more employees), contributed to the increase, according to the report. Notably, more large employers covered costly GLP-1 weight-loss medications in 2025—approximately 49%, up from 44% in 2024.

For 2026, an even higher total health benefit cost increase of 6.7% is expected. This will push the average cost above $18,500 per employee, according to Mercer.

Going deeper

“The S&P 500 could hit 7,000 this week, while Trump hints at a Fed chair pick and Washington eyes this special election” is a new Fortune report by Jason Ma. 

From the report: “The stock market is about to begin the final month of 2025 on the back of a strong uptrend that has raised hopes the typical year-end ‘Santa Claus rally’ is starting early this season.

“The market’s rebound was fueled by hopes that another rate cut later this month is still on the table, after some hawkish policymakers previously hinted at a wait-and-see stance. But President Trump could further stoke more dovish views if he reveals who his choice will be to take over as Fed chair when Powell’s term expires in May.

“‘I know who I’m going to pick as Fed chair. I will announce it soon,’ Trump told reporters on Sunday.” Read the complete report here. 

Overheard

“Right now, leading labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are following business models that are neither novel nor difficult for technology companies like Amazon, Microsoft, or Google to follow.”

—Scott D. Anthony, a clinical professor of strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, writes in a Fortune opinion piece. If the leading labs don’t develop “unique ways to create, capture, and deliver value, history suggests they are likely to have finite lives as standalone providers,” Anthony writes. His latest book isEpic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World. 



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Construction workers are earning up to 30% more in the data center boom

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December 5, 2025

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Big Tech’s AI arms race is fueling a massive investment surge in data centers with construction worker labor valued at a premium. 

Despite some concerns of an AI bubble, data center hyperscalers like Google, Amazon, and Meta continue to invest heavily into AI infrastructure. In effect, construction workers’ salaries are being inflated to satisfy a seemingly insatiable AI demand, experts tell Fortune.

In 2026 alone, upwards of $100 billion could be invested by tech companies into the data center buildout in the U.S., Raul Martynek, the CEO of DataBank, a company that contracts with tech giants to construct data centers, told Fortune.

In November, Bank of Americaestimated global hyperscale spending is rising 67% in 2025 and another 31% in 2026, totaling a massive $611 billion investment for the AI buildout in just two years.

Given the high demand, construction workers are experiencing a pay bump for data center projects.

Construction projects generally operate on tight margins, with clients being very cost-conscious, Fraser Patterson, CEO of Skillit, an AI-powered hiring platform for construction workers, told Fortune.

But some of the top 50 contractors by size in the country have seen their revenue double in a 12-month period based on data center construction, which is allowing them to pay their workers more, according to Patterson.

“Because of the huge demand and the nature of this construction work, which is fueling the arms race of AI… the budgets are not as tight,” he said. “I would say they’re a little more frothy.”

On Skillit, the average salary for construction projects that aren’t building data centers is $62,000, or $29.80 an hour, Patterson said. The workers that use the platform comprise 40 different trades and have a wide range of experience from heavy equipment operators to electricians, with eight years as the average years of experience.

But when it comes to data centers, the same workers make an average salary of $81,800 or $39.33 per hour, Patterson said, increasing salaries by just under 32% on average.

Some construction workers are even hitting the six-figure mark after their salaries rose for data center projects, according to The Wall Street Journal. And the data center boom doesn’t show any signs it’s slowing down anytime soon.

Tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft operate 522 data centers and are developing 411 more, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing data from Synergy Research Group. 

Patterson said construction workers are being paid more to work on building data centers in part due to condensed project timelines, which require complex coordination or machinery and skilled labor.

Projects that would usually take a couple of years to finish are being completed—in some instances—as quickly as six months, he said.

It is unclear how long the data center boom might last, but Patterson said it has in part convinced a growing number of Gen Z workers and recent college grads to choose construction trades as their career path.

“AI is creating a lot of job anxiety around knowledge workers,” Patterson said. “Construction work is, by definition, very hard to automate.”

“I think you’re starting to see a change in the labor market,” he added.



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Netflix cofounder started his career selling vacuums door-to-door before college—now, his $440 billion streaming giant is buying Warner Bros. and HBO

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December 5, 2025

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Reed Hastings may soon pull off one of the biggest deals in entertainment history. On Thursday, Netflix announced plans to acquire Warner Bros.—home to franchises like Dune, Harry Potter, and DC Universe, along with streamer HBO Max—in a total enterprise value deal of $83 billion. The move is set to cement Netflix as a media juggernaut that now rivals the legacy Hollywood giants it once disrupted.

It’s a remarkable trajectory for Netflix’s cofounder, Hastings—a self-made billionaire who found a love for business starting as a teenage door-to-door salesperson.

“I took a year off between high school and college and sold Rainbow vacuum cleaners door to door,” Hastings recalled to The New York Timesin 2006. “I started it as a summer job and found I liked it. As a sales pitch, I cleaned the carpet with the vacuum the customer had and then cleaned it with the Rainbow.”

That scrappy sales job was the first exposure to how to properly read customers—an instinct that would later shape Netflix’s user-obsessed culture. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1983, Hastings considered joining the Marine Corps but ultimately joined the Peace Corps, teaching math in Eswatini for two years. When he returned to the U.S., he obtained a master’s in computer science from Stanford and began his career in tech.

The idea for Netflix reportedly came a few years later in the late 1990s. After misplacing a VHS copy of Apollo 13 and getting hit with a $40 late fee at Blockbuster, Hastings began exploring a mail-order rental service. While it’s an origin story that has since been debated, it marked the start of a company that would reshape global entertainment.

Hastings stepped back as CEO in 2023 and now serves as Netflix’s chairman of the board. He has amassed a net worth of about $5.6 billion. He’d be even richer if he didn’t keep offloading his shares in the company and making record-breaking charitable donations.

Netflix’s secret for success: finding the right people

Hastings has long said that one of the biggest drivers of Netflix’s success is its focus on hiring and keeping exceptional talent.

“If you’re going to win the championship, you got to have incredible talent in every position. And that’s how we think about it,” he told CNBC in 2020. “We encourage people to focus on who of your employees would you fight hard to keep if they were going to another company? And those are the ones we want to hold onto.”

To secure top performers, Hastings said he was more than willing to pay for above-market rates. 

“With a fixed amount of money for salaries and a project I needed to complete, I had a choice: Hire 10 to 25 average engineers, or hire one ‘rock-star’ and pay significantly more than what I’d pay the others, if necessary,” Hastings wrote. “Over the years, I’ve come to see that the best programmer doesn’t add 10 times the value. He or she adds more like a 100 times.”

That mindset also guided Netflix’s leadership transition. When Hastings stepped back from the C-suite, the company didn’t pick a single successor—it picked two. Greg Peters joined Ted Sarandos as co-CEO in 2023.

“It’s a high-performance technique,” Hastings said, speaking about the co-CEO model. “It’s not for most situations and most companies. But if you’ve got two people that work really well together and complement and extend and trust each other, then it’s worth doing.”

Netflix’s stock has soared more than 80,000% since its IPO in 2002, adjusting for stock splits.

Netflix brought unlimited PTO into the mainstream

Netflix’s flexible workplace culture has also played a key role in its success, with Hastings often known for prioritizing time off to recharge. 

“I take a lot of vacation, and I’m hoping that certainly sets an example,” the former CEO said in 2015. “It is helpful. You often do your best thinking when you’re off hiking in some mountain or something. You get a different perspective on things.”

The company was one of the first to introduce unlimited PTO, a policy that many firms have since adopted. About 57% of retail investors have said it could improve overall company performance, according to a survey by Bloomberg. Critics have argued that such policies can backfire when employees feel guilty taking time off, but Hastings has maintained that freedom is core to Netflix’s identity. 

“We are fundamentally dedicated to employee freedom because that makes us more flexible, and we’ve had to adapt so much back from DVD by mail to leading streaming today,” Hastings said. “If you give employees freedom you’ve got a better chance at that success.”

Netflix’s other cofounder, Marc Randolph, embraced a similar philosophy of valuing work-life balance.

“For over thirty years, I had a hard cut-off on Tuesdays. Rain or shine, I left at exactly 5 p.m. and spent the evening with my best friend. We would go to a movie, have dinner, or just go window-shopping downtown together,” Randolph wrote in a LinkedIn post.

“Those Tuesday nights kept me sane. And they put the rest of my work in perspective.”



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‘This species is recovering’: Jaguar spotted in Arizona, far from Central and South American core

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December 5, 2025

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The spots gave it away. Just like a human fingerprint, the rosette pattern on each jaguar is unique so researchers knew they had a new animal on their hands after reviewing images captured by a remote camera in southern Arizona.

The University of Arizona Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center says it’s the fifth big cat over the last 15 years to be spotted in the area after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The animal was captured by the camera as it visited a watering hole in November, its distinctive spots setting it apart from previous sightings.

“We’re very excited. It signifies this edge population of jaguars continues to come here because they’re finding what they need,” Susan Malusa, director of the center’s jaguar and ocelot project, said during an interview Thursday.

The team is now working to collect scat samples to conduct genetic analysis and determine the sex and other details about the new jaguar, including what it likes to eat. The menu can include everything from skunks and javelina to small deer.

As an indicator species, Malusa said the continued presence of big cats in the region suggests a healthy landscape but that climate change and border barriers can threaten migratory corridors. She explained that warming temperatures and significant drought increase the urgency to ensure connectivity for jaguars with their historic range in Arizona.

More than 99% of the jaguar’s range is found in Central and South America, and the few male jaguars that have been spotted in the U.S. are believed to have dispersed from core populations in Mexico, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Officials have said that jaguar breeding in the U.S. has not been documented in more than 100 years.

Federal biologists have listed primary threats to the endangered species as habitat loss and fragmentation along with the animals being targeted for trophies and illegal trade.

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued a final rule in 2024, revising the habitat set aside for jaguars in response to a legal challenge. The area was reduced to about 1,000 square miles (2,590 square kilometers) in Arizona’s Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties.

Recent detection data supports findings that a jaguar appears every few years, Malusa said, with movement often tied to the availability of water. When food and water are plentiful, there’s less movement.

In the case of Jaguar #5, she said it was remarkable that the cat kept returning to the area over a 10-day period. Otherwise, she described the animals as quite elusive.

“That’s the message — that this species is recovering,” Malusa said. “We want people to know that and that we still do have a chance to get it right and keep these corridors open.”



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