Uber Pays 153 Percent of ezCater’s 2021 Mark While Miro and Airtable Sell for a Tenth

Uber agreed on Oct. 6 to buy the corporate-catering platform ezCater for $2.3 billion in cash, Bloomberg reported, 53 percent more than the $1.5 billion pre-money valuation ezCater set in its last funding round in late 2021. In the same year, Miro and Airtable have changed hands for about a tenth of their last valuations. The spread between those outcomes is the story of the boom-era cohort being sold off in 2026.

Crunchbase News writer Joanna Glasner catalogued the pattern on Oct. 22, citing a list of 15 deals in which the target had not raised equity funding for four years or more. This analysis uses the five deals with prices in her article and tests them against one claim: that a sale below the last valuation is a rescue, and one above it is a win.

The five deals in numbers

Target	Buyer	Price	Last valuation
ezCater	Uber	$2.3 billion cash	$1.5 billion pre-money, late 2021
Miro	Bending Spoons	About $1.36 billion	$17.5 billion post-money, early 2022
Airtable	Bending Spoons	$1.28 billion	$11 billion, Dec. 2021
Headspace	Sword Health	About $300 million, reported	$2.6 billion peak post-money
Everlane	Shein	$100 million	Hundreds of millions, 2020

The Headspace price is reported rather than confirmed, and the $2.6 billion is a peak, not a last-round figure, because Crunchbase gives no date for its final round. Miro’s price was published by iTnews on Sept. 11 as $1.36 billion in an all-cash deal.

1. ezCater153 %
2. Airtable12 %
3. Headspace12 %
4. Miro8 %

Source: Crunchbase News, Oct. 22, 2026; our arithmetic. Miro and Airtable compare price with post-money, ezCater with pre-money, Headspace with peak.

The chart mixes valuation definitions, and a headline price is not the same thing as equity value paid to holders. It is a rough guide to scale. It is not an accounting of what investors got back.

Why ezCater is the outlier

ezCater’s late-2021 mark of $1.5 billion pre-money was a fraction of Miro’s $17.5 billion. Uber said ezCater generated more than $2.5 billion in gross bookings over the past 12 months, with average orders above $400, according to Bloomberg, and that it expects the deal to boost margins.

Scott Devitt, an analyst at Rosenblatt, said: "Importantly, bringing workplace buyers into the ecosystem supports the membership flywheel." That is a strategic buyer paying for a customer base it wants, and ezCater is the only one of the five where the price beat the last mark.

The Uber deal also follows its July agreement to buy Delivery Hero for $14.8 billion, so ezCater is a small piece of a larger purchasing run. None of the sources reviewed says how the other four buyers set their prices.

Add the two Bending Spoons deals together and the buyer has committed about $2.64 billion, $1.28 billion plus about $1.36 billion, for companies whose last rounds valued them at $11 billion and $17.5 billion, or $28.5 billion in all. That is about 9 percent of the combined marks, by our arithmetic. Crunchbase dates Airtable to August and Miro to the following month, so the two deals were agreed within weeks of each other.

The alternative exit is a listing, and the site has covered one: the Zetwerk IPO in India. The site has also covered a 2026 round that is still pricing growth, the Blacksmith Series C, a developer-tools company. Neither is a 2021 vintage selling at a discount.

What a low price does to shareholders

A sale at 8 percent of the last valuation does not mean every holder loses 92 percent. Preferred stock, the class venture funds hold, usually gets paid before common stock, the class employees and founders hold. The more preferred capital sits ahead of the line, the less reaches common holders.

The extreme case is Foursquare. Co-founder and former chief executive Dennis Crowley wrote on his blog that investors saw no returns from the sale to advertising company Infillion, TechCrunch reported on Oct. 21. Crowley inferred that neither preferred nor common holders received value, drawing on a post by an angel investor he did not name. The price was not disclosed, so that remains an inference. PitchBook data cited by TechCrunch puts the capital raised at more than $411 million.

The article carries no comment from Infillion, from the private equity firm that invested in Foursquare in 2019, or from the chief executive hired in 2021. Crowley himself blamed a leadership transition for the outcome. The case shows that "acquired" and "returned capital" are different statements, and that none of the five prices above says which one applies to a given shareholder.

What would change the read

Two observable things would test the argument that 2026 is a clearing year for 2021 vintages. The first is whether the ezCater deal closes in the "coming months" Uber has promised, subject to regulatory approval. The second is whether Bending Spoons, the buyer of both Miro and Airtable per Crunchbase, completes Miro. Its closing date was not in the sources reviewed.

If more 2021 companies sell above their marks, as ezCater did, the discount story weakens. So far, in the five deals priced, the count is one above and four far below.