Flink

Flink was founded in December 2020 in Berlin by Oliver Merkel, Christoph Cordes and Julian Dames as a direct competitor to Gorillas and Getir in European q-commerce. The company raised $1.3B from Mubadala, Prosus, German grocery giant REWE (a strategic partner that supplied inventory) and crucially $300M from DoorDash in 2022 at a $5B valuation — at the time the most valuable q-commerce company in Europe. The model — 10-minute grocery delivery from dark stores — suffered the same negative unit economics that killed Gorillas and pushed Getir back to Turkey: leaked figures suggested losses of €3–6 per order in Western European markets. Flink exited France in October 2022, laid off ~150 staff in March 2023, and shrank its dark-store footprint repeatedly through 2023. In 2024 the company conducted a sharp restructuring at a roughly 90% valuation markdown to ~$500M, and is now operating only in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria with a much smaller footprint and a less aggressive 'fast' (not 10-minute) delivery promise. The company is still alive in 2026 but the venture thesis that justified its $5B valuation has been broadly written off. Flink, alongside Getir and Gorillas, is now the textbook example of how billions of dollars of VC capital can be deployed into a category whose unit economics never worked.