Gorillas' 10-minute grocery bet: Europe's fastest unicorn, shut down by May 2024

Berlin-based instant grocery delivery: order through the Gorillas app, couriers pick from neighborhood micro-fulfillment centers and deliver in about 10 minutes; a 'dark store' version of convenience retail.

That 10-minute grocery delivery from local dark stores would become a daily habit, and that speed plus subsidies would win Europe's last mile.

$950M Series C at a $3B valuation (Sept 2021, Delivery Hero-led), after a $290M Series B and $44M Series A; sold to Getir in Dec 2022 in a deal valuing Gorillas at about $1.2B

Founded in Berlin in May 2020 by Kağan Sümer and Jörg Kattner during the first COVID lockdown, with a roughly €1.2M seed from Atlantic Food Labs. Sümer's thesis: supermarkets are built around the weekly bulk shop, leaving 'right now' purchases — a missing ingredient, a spontaneous craving — underserved, and the pandemic was pulling those purchases online.

Coatue led a $44M Series A in December 2020, then a $290M Series B (with DST Global and Tencent) in March 2021 at a valuation above $1B, making Gorillas one of Europe's fastest unicorns with 12+ cities and 40 micro-fulfillment centers. A $950M Series C led by Delivery Hero in September 2021 valued it at $3B as it expanded across Europe and into the US. Growth stalled as pandemic habits faded; rivals slashed prices while rider protests over working conditions and wage disputes mounted. In December 2022 Getir acquired Gorillas in a deal valuing the combined group at $10B and Gorillas at about $1.2B, then shrank the brand to a handful of German cities.

Gone: in April 2024 Getir announced it was exiting Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and the US to focus on Turkey; the Gorillas app stopped taking orders in Germany by mid-May 2024 and the brand was shut down.

Unit economics never held at scale: dark stores in expensive neighborhoods, thousands of riders and a low flat fee required a volume that discount-driven competition kept unprofitable.

Speed was the only differentiator and it was copyable — Flink, Getir and others promised the same minutes, turning the market into a subsidy war.

Pandemic demand was mistaken for permanent demand: when shopping habits normalized, the growth that justified a $3B valuation vanished.

Consolidation only delayed the end: acquirer Getir was itself unprofitable, cut Gorillas down to a few cities, then exited Europe entirely.

Speed alone is no moat: rivals copy it, and the stores, riders and subsidies behind it scale costs faster than revenue. Subsidized growth buys share, not loyalty — it evaporates when funding stops.

As of May 2024 Gorillas no longer operated: Getir closed its German operations by mid-May, cut roughly 1,800 jobs there, and exited the UK, the Netherlands and the US to concentrate on Turkey, backed by a fresh round led by Mubadala and G Squared. The Gorillas brand, once plastered across Berlin's streets and subway stations, disappeared with the quick-commerce wave it helped start; rival Flink remained Germany's market leader but still faced the same profitability question.