DoorDash Warns Restaurants Over AI Rival Bites as Stuut Raises $52.5M for Payment Agents

The warning letter was sent in August. DoorDash, which processed 970 million orders in its second quarter this year and generated $4.5 billion in revenue, told restaurants that it had heard from 'several partners' that were added to Bites without their knowledge, The Verge reported. Copies of the form letter seen by The Verge said restaurants may not have agreed to Bites' terms, pricing structures, or service standards, may not control the accuracy of their menus or hours on Bites, and, depending on the state, such practices could be illegal. The email included instructions on how to contact Bites to request removal.

Bites has around 300 restaurants signed up in the Bay Area and is operating as a pre-seed startup, a small footprint compared with DoorDash. The Verge described DoorDash's move as either a proactive alert to partners or an offensive against a relatively small peer, and said it hints at a broader fight between established apps and leaner AI startups. The Verge coined the term 'the DoorDash problem' for the risk that AI agents become the main way consumers interact with the internet, reducing the control websites and apps have over customer relationships. It cited questions such as what happens when Amazon cannot show boosted listings, when Uber cannot offer a free subscription trial, or when a food delivery service cannot upsell a bottle of wine.

Bites pitches itself as an alternative to delivery middlemen. DoorDash fees for restaurants range from 15 to 30 percent per delivery order, according to The Verge, and restaurants that pay more can be more visible. Bites says it offers simplified delivery and service fees and a flat $1 surcharge per order, which it says lets partners keep item prices lower. Diners typically pay the $1 fee, though some restaurants cover it. Bites has a traditional app but calls itself 'AI native': diners can order from Bites restaurants directly in ChatGPT, and orders go directly to the restaurant rather than to a third-party platform.

Bites founder and CEO Bala Subramaniam said the company heard from 14 restaurant partners who received a letter from DoorDash, and from a handful of businesses not listed on Bites that now wanted to join after learning about the company. Bites acknowledged that some restaurants requested removal, saying they had been listed from old demos. Others received emails despite not being listed at all, The Verge reported. Jay Jayaraman, who has 13 restaurants listed on Bites, said that before joining the platform 80 percent of his orders came from DoorDash; now he estimates 65 percent come through Bites, 25 percent from DoorDash, and the rest from Uber Eats and Grubhub. He said his margins are higher with Bites orders. 'We are seeing a huge drop or a huge shift away from DoorDash, which I personally welcome because it's adding to my bottom line,' Jayaraman said.

The Verge reported that a shift away from websites and individual apps would prevent companies from showing similar products, offering deals and free trials, and monetizing through ads and boosted listings. DoorDash's ads business hit $1 billion in 2024, according to the report. The most prominent instance of tension between an AI service provider and a major platform is the legal fight between Perplexity and Amazon, in which Amazon sued Perplexity in 2025.

Separately, Stuut Inc. said it closed a $52.5 million Series B round, bringing its total raised to $93 million, SiliconANGLE reported. Insight Partners led the round, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and Microsoft's M12. Stuut targets a broken order-to-cash process that it says wipes out up to 5 percent of the average enterprise's revenue each year, amounting to more than $1 trillion annually when Fortune 500 revenue is considered. The losses come from administrative errors such as missing purchase orders, bad data, or invoices sent to the wrong people, forcing finance departments to chase payments manually across billing systems, invoicing systems, and payment portals.

Stuut uses AI agents to automate the entire order-to-cash cycle, covering order management, invoicing, credit, collections, cash applications, payments, and disputes. It integrates its agents directly into existing enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems and payment gateways. Co-founder and CEO Tarek Alaruri said the platform builds a 'living memory' of each customer's payment behavior and portal quirks to chase missing payments automatically. 'Most businesses don't have the bandwidth to segment their base or give customers the level of service they deserve,' he said. 'By leveraging AI, we're able to deliver the only solution with continuous learning loops to improve the customer experience, reduce churn and deliver better financial performance.'

Alaruri said a shortage of qualified financial experts has made manual collections harder. More than 300,000 accountants have left the profession since 2019, and U.S. businesses are chasing a combined $7.2 trillion worth of unpaid receivables, he said. Stuut says its platform matches more than 95 percent of incoming payments with orders automatically and facilitates more than 81 percent of outbound collections without human intervention, cutting the average customer's days sales outstanding by 47 percent. It says its customer base grew more than fivefold in the last year, processing more than $3 billion worth of payments. Its clients include more than 150 large enterprises such as Verifone, Bishop Lifting Products, and ZoomInfo. With ZoomInfo, Stuut helped reduce time-to-first-touch by more than 90 percent and cut days sales outstanding from 51 to 40 days.

Julian Marcu of Insight Partners said many businesses have more cash tied up in receivables than they realize. 'A single invoice error can trigger weeks of follow-up across teams and systems and at scale that adds up to real revenue left on the table,' he said. 'Stuut has figured out how to use agents to execute that recovery process and match cash to invoices while fitting naturally within the controls, workflows and systems finance teams already use.' With the new funds, Stuut plans to invest in credit scoring, lending, and automated fund movement services as part of a goal to manage businesses' entire transaction processes, from initial sales to the final bank deposit.