Jet.com

Walmart paid $3 billion, then switched it off

Shut down
19902026

Jet.com was built to beat Amazon on price, with a basket that got cheaper the more you added to it. It raised $820 million, launched in 2015, and was bought by Walmart for $3.3 billion a year later. Walmart shut it down in 2020, having got what it actually wanted, which was the people who built it.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2014
  2. 2014 Launch
    Jet is founded

    Marc Lore builds a pricing engine that discounts the whole basket.

  3. 2015
  4. 11 February 2015 Funding
    $140 million raised before launch

    Total venture funding reaches $820 million across four rounds.

  5. 21 July 2015 Launch
    Jet.com opens to the public

    Prices fall as you add to the basket or give up return rights.

  6. 2016
  7. 8 August 2016 Acquisition
    Walmart agrees to buy Jet for $3.3 billion

    Marc Lore takes over Walmart's US e-commerce.

  8. 2019
  9. June 2019 Decline
    Staff move to Walmart.com

    The Jet president steps down and most employees are transferred.

  10. 2020
  11. 19 May 2020 Shutdown announced
    Two sentences in a quarterly report

    Walmart says it will discontinue Jet.com.

  12. 4 June 2020 Shutdown
    Jet.com goes offline

    Visitors are sent to Walmart.com.

The site through time

Browse jet.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Jet.com, Inc. 2014–2016 Founded Marc Lore, Mike Hanrahan and Nate Faust, Hoboken, New Jersey
Walmart 2016–2020 Acquisition, $3.3B About $3.3 billion, Walmart's largest e-commerce purchase

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Valuation (USD) ▲ 3.3 billion 8 August 2016 Confirmed Price Walmart paid, its largest e-commerce acquisition at the time

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Walmart announced the closure in a two-sentence note in its first quarter 2020 results, citing "continued strength of the Walmart.com brand". The site went offline on 4 June 2020.

Our analysis: Walmart did not buy Jet for the website. It bought Marc Lore and his team to run Walmart's own e-commerce, and it got them. Once Walmart.com had absorbed the ideas and the people, the second brand was a cost with no purpose.

History [edit]

The basket that got cheaper

Marc Lore had already sold Diapers.com to Amazon in 2010. His next idea was that shoppers would accept trade-offs in exchange for genuinely lower prices, and that the savings should be visible while you shopped.

Jet's pricing engine recalculated the whole basket in real time. Add a second item that ships from the same warehouse and everything got cheaper. Waive the right to return an item and the price dropped again. Pay by debit rather than credit card and it dropped once more. The customer could watch the discount grow as they made choices, which no other retailer showed.

It raised $820 million across four rounds, from GV, Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital Ventures, Accel, Alibaba and Fidelity, before it had sold anything. The site opened formally on 21 July 2015.

Bought in a year

On 8 August 2016 Walmart agreed to buy Jet for about $3.3 billion, its largest e-commerce acquisition. Marc Lore took over Walmart's US e-commerce business.

That is where the value went. Over the next three years Walmart.com absorbed Jet's ideas and much of its team, and grew fast. Jet itself was repositioned at urban and younger shoppers, then quietly left alone. In June 2019 most Jet employees were moved onto Walmart.com and the Jet president stepped down.

Two sentences

On 19 May 2020 Walmart announced the end in its quarterly results, in a note two sentences long: because of the continued strength of the Walmart.com brand, the company would discontinue Jet.com. The site went dark on 4 June.

Doug McMillon credited the acquisition with jump-starting everything Walmart had done in e-commerce since. On that measure Walmart got what it paid for. It simply did not need the shop it came in.

Similar projects

Pets.com The sock puppet outlived the company 1998–2000 Webvan Right idea, twenty years early, at a billion dollars a mistake 1999–2001 eToys.com Worth more than Toys R Us, for about a year 1997–2001 Kozmo.com A video in an hour, free, by bicycle 1998–2001 Half.com It once bought a whole town for its name 1999–2017 Boo.com $135 million in eighteen months, on a site nobody could load 1999–2000

Sources [edit]

  1. Walmart winds down Jet.com four years after $3.3 billion acquisition CNBC 19 May 2020 [archived]
  2. Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash TechCrunch 8 August 2016 [archived]

Last verified: 13 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).