Instacart raises another $100 million in funding to expand further during the US online grocery boom

• Instacart has raised another $100 million in funding to add to the $225 million it raised in June, giving the company a valuation of $13.8 billion.
• The company has been growing quickly during the coronavirus pandemic as more consumers opt for online grocery delivery.
• This new funding will allow the company to scale the business further.

Instacart has raised another $100 million in funding, giving the company a $13.8 billion valuation.

The news was first reported by Axios on Friday and was confirmed in a statement to Business Insider.

The additional funding comes less than a month after the company closed a $225 million round of investment led by DST Global and General Catalyst.

"Instacart has expanded its recent fundraising round with an additional $100 million investment from the funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc," an Instacart spokesperson said in a statement on Friday.

Instacart is a delivery company that pairs customers with personal shoppers who pick and deliver groceries to customers' homes.

The company has grown quickly during the coronavirus pandemic as more consumers opt for online grocery delivery.

In a statement last month announcing the $225 million investment, Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta said this capital would enable the company to "fund strategic initiatives such as our advertising and enterprise businesses, and continue to deliver exceptional experiences for customers."

He said: "COVID-19 created a massive shift for the grocery industry and forever changed how people view the necessity of on-demand services. Overnight, Instacart became an essential service for millions of families across North America and our teams have worked incredibly hard to safely serve customers and shoppers during this time of need."

The company said that its app and services are now accessible to more than 85% of households in the US and more than 70% of households in Canada.

Over the past few months, it has been grappling with the surge in demand and hiring hundreds of thousands of shoppers, who work as independent contractors.

In an interview with a Credit Suisse analyst in April, Instacart president Nilam Ganenthiran described the past few weeks as being akin to Black Friday, only every day.

"Customers are coming online in droves," he said.

And he doesn't think that this surge in demand will drop off entirely after the pandemic has passed. Instead, he expects to see a permanent change in how US shoppers buy groceries.

"Awareness wasn't there across the US," he said, "and the bulk of the country didn't know that a service like ours existed.

"That has changed... customers know that for the times that they need it, a service like ours exists," he said.