DoorDash is buying Instacart for $17 billion. Its employees can’t add Instacart staff on LinkedIn

DoorDash is spending $17 billion to acquire Instacart. But until the deal closes, its employees aren’t even allowed to connect with their future colleagues on LinkedIn.

If an Instacart employee reaches out, DoorDash has a script ready: “Congrats! Looking forward to connecting after the deal closes.” Anything beyond that, the company says, needs approval from its legal team.

The instructions come from an internal Q&A that DoorDash filed with the SEC on Oct. 29, the day the deal was announced. Employees should not send new LinkedIn connection requests to Instacart workers or accept requests from them, “even if you have a prior relationship.” Throughout the document, the company repeats that the two businesses must keep operating independently until the deal closes.

That could take a while. DoorDash expects the acquisition to close at the end of 2027 or in the first half of 2028, subject to Instacart shareholder approval and antitrust reviews in the U.S., Canada, and Israel . That could leave the LinkedIn freeze in place for up to 20 months.

The stakes are high for DoorDash, a Fortune 500 company that reported $13.7 billion in revenue last year. At $17 billion , the Instacart deal costs more than a full year of its sales.

The restriction reflects legal requirements designed to prevent what antitrust lawyers call “gun-jumping,” when companies begin improperly coordinating their operations before a merger officially closes. The Federal Trade Commission has warned that merging companies must safeguard competitively sensitive information, including pricing, costs, and business strategies, until a deal closes.

Sharing that information or coordinating prices too early could violate antitrust laws, reduce competition, and potentially raise prices for consumers before regulators even approve the deal. Even without gun-jumping, regulators can still block a merger.

In 2024, a federal judge blocked Kroger’s $24.6 billion acquisition of Albertsons after the FTC argued the deal would raise grocery prices. The judge sided with the FTC on competition for shoppers but rejected its argument about competition for workers. The companies abandoned the deal.

Restricting contact between employees of merging companies is not unprecedented. In 2018, defense contractor SAIC instructed employees not to contact workers at Engility, which it was acquiring, without clearance or coordination through its integration team. Employees already working together could continue.