Tony Xu was born in Nanjing, China, and came to the United States with his parents as a young child. They settled in Champaign, Illinois, in 1989, where his father, a professor in China, earned a PhD at the University of Illinois. Xu has said the family arrived with only a few hundred dollars.
His mother was a doctor in China whose licence was not recognised in the US. He told CNBC in December 2020 that she worked three jobs a day for 12 years before opening her own clinic. Xu started a lawn-mowing business at nine and washed dishes at a restaurant where his mother worked.
He studied industrial engineering and operations research at UC Berkeley, worked at McKinsey and consulted for eBay and PayPal, then enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business. With classmates Andy Fang, Evan Moore and Stanley Tang he launched PaloAltoDelivery.com in January 2013, and DoorDash was incorporated that June. Y Combinator invested $120,000 for 7 percent in summer 2013.
DoorDash listed at $102 a share on 9 December 2020, raising $3.37 billion. It reported revenue of $13.7 billion and net income of $935 million in fiscal 2025, and its market value was about $78 billion in November 2026, according to companiesmarketcap.com.