DoorDash Poaches AI Startup Talent to Bolster Voice Ordering
(Bloomberg) -- DoorDash Inc. is hiring senior members from artificial intelligence startup Standard AI to bolster its voice ordering product for restaurant clients.
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Standard AI’s former Chief Executive Officer Jordan Fisher and co-founders Brandon Ogle and Daniel Fischetti are among those joining the San Francisco-based delivery app. The startup, a retail-technology company founded in 2017, has raised more than $260 million from investors including the SoftBank Vision Fund and EQT Ventures, according to PitchBook. It was valued at $1 billion in its latest funding round in 2021.
At DoorDash, which sells enterprise technology to restaurant operators in addition to operating its consumer delivery app, the new hires will focus on an AI product the company introduced last August that helps restaurants take phone orders. The company says it’s in conversations with a number of mid-market and enterprise restaurants about participating in product testing, including many notable pizza partners.
A DoorDash spokesman declined to disclose deal terms but said it involved fewer than 10 hires and no product licensing.
DoorDash, the largest food delivery company in the US, is the latest among technology firms to scoop up staff from AI startups to accelerate their offerings amid fierce competition in product and talent.
Last week, Microsoft Corp. snapped up Inflection AI’s co-founders, as well as most of the employees. Apple Inc. bought Canadian startup DarwinAI earlier this year, and incorporated dozens of its employees into the iPhone maker’s AI division, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month. Last year, Airbnb Inc. acquired a stealth 12-person AI startup led by former Apple executives behind the voice assistant Siri.
On Tuesday, Standard AI said it was promoting Chief Operating Officer Angie Westbrock to replace Fisher as CEO and technology strategy senior vice president David Woollard to the role of chief technology officer. Fisher will remain on the board as chairman. The company announced Tuesday that it’s pivoting from an autonomous checkout product to using computer vision more broadly to generate analytics for retailers so the company can better understand consumer behavior in physical stores.
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