Grocery delivery firm Instacart confidentially files to go public

Just weeks ago, Instacart slashed its valuation by nearly 40%. Now, the company is moving forward with plans for a possible Wall Street debut.

Instacart has filed confidential paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering, the company announced Wednesday.

The San Francisco-based startup did not disclose any details on the size and timing of its market debut in the statement. A company spokesperson declined to provide further details.

The move comes amid some turbulence in the on-demand market and across the tech sector. Shares of DoorDash and Uber are each down more than 40% compared to a year ago. Both companies have a history of losing money.

Instacart's own business also faces new unknowns. Instacart's growth soared during the pandemic as consumers increasingly turned to its grocery delivery service, but as CNN Business reported in February, the incredible demand began to stabilize and some shoppers had begun feeling the effects.

The company revised its valuation from its peak of $39 billion down to about $24 billion in March, citing recent market turbulence.

The timing of the IPO paperwork appears to have aligned with its ten-year "birthday" as a company, an occasion Instacart's recently installed CEO Fidji Simo published a blog post about Wednesday. The post did not mention the filing.

"As much as the grocery industry has changed over the last decade, we believe the next decade will be even bigger — with changes driven mostly by technology," Simo wrote. "At Instacart, we believe the future of grocery belongs to those that invented it — not tech goliaths or newcomers trying to drive grocers out of business."

An Instacart IPO has been widely speculated for years, with Instacart's founder and then-CEO Apoorva Mehta saying in 2018 that an IPO was "on the horizon." He reiterated that stance in early 2019 even after Instacart announced its partnership with Whole Foods -- which Amazon bought in 2017 -- was ending.

In recent months, Instacart has unveiled new offerings to broaden the services it provides to retail partners, including a push into faster deliveries, a space where a number of emerging entrants are competing. Asked by CNN Business about plans to go public in March, Simo declined to comment on timing but said: "We do plan to be a public company at some point and I really wanted to make sure that, as we think about that, we really attract investors that understand the vision for the company."