After Dingdong Maicai, Alibaba, Meituan, and JD.com are competing for the last independent fresh food e-commerce platform using a "dark store" model with a total investment of $5 billion.

In February 2026, Meituan outbid JD.com and Alibaba, acquiring Dingdong Maicai for $717 million. Another independent player in the pre - warehouse track has disappeared.

Just three months later, the above three e - commerce giants have stirred up waves in the pre - warehouse industry again. According to exclusive news from business observers, Meituan, JD.com, and Alibaba are simultaneously competing to acquire Pupu Supermarket. Currently, the latter's valuation has been bid between $2 billion and $5 billion.

These two transactions are less than a quarter apart. Only by looking at them together can we clearly see the real underlying changes in this track: the fresh e - commerce pre - warehouse track is no longer an experimental field for startups to prove their models, but the last piece of the puzzle for established e - commerce giants to complete their instant retail maps.

This is not a regular asset acquisition, but a strategic positioning battle. The demands, chips, and bottom lines of the three parties are different; however, there is a common premise judgment - If you don't take it now, you won't have another chance later.

Whoever acquires Pupu will be able to control the "switch" of the fresh produce supply chain market in South China.

Why are the three giants vying for Pupu: An unbreakable wall and a fertile ground for development

Let's start with an easily overlooked fact: Pupu is not being forced to sell.

In 2024, it had a revenue of 30 billion yuan, a gross profit margin of 22.5%, a fulfillment cost ratio of less than 17.5%, and a fresh produce loss rate of 1.5%. It made a profit throughout the year and had a healthy cash flow - this is a company that survived and thrived on its own operations during the capital winter.

Then why is it considering a sale?

Because the reality Pupu faces is that it has won in the regional market but cannot win the final victory.

This is not a problem of Pupu's individual corporate ability, but a real pain point faced by the entire industry track. When Meituan crushes with the dual resources of Xiaoxiang Supermarket and Dingdong Maicai, when Alibaba's Hema continuously penetrates with its national brand influence, and when JD.com's home - delivery platform diverts users with its traffic... No matter how powerful a regional leader is, in essence, it is only making local optimizations in a strategic environment of continuous blood - loss.

Comparing the sales of the "Three Little Strongholds in the Pre - warehouse" in 2024: Xiaoxiang had 38 billion yuan in sales, Pupu had 33 billion yuan, and Dingdong had 25.6 billion yuan. Pupu has been overtaken by Xiaoxiang. The fundamental reason is that Xiaoxiang, backed by Meituan, can save on customer acquisition costs for each order just with an entry on the home page of the Meituan App.

So, the reason Pupu is willing to accept the olive branches from the three giants is not that it can't hold on, but that it clearly understands: In the track dominated by the ecosystems of giants, the window for independent players to develop and grow is gradually closing. MissFresh has exited the market, Dingdong has been sold, and among the startups that emerged in the pre - warehouse track over the past decade, only Pupu remains as an independent player.

However, "staying standing" and "having a future" are two different things. Since this track evolved from the "Five Tigers Competing for Dominance" to the present, it has proven the same thing: the space for the pre - warehouse to exist as an independent model is getting narrower and narrower - the giants have three barriers: traffic entry, distribution network, and financial strength, while independent players have none of them.

If measured by the highest valuation of $5 billion in this acquisition, after calculating the PE ratio corresponding to Pupu's net profit in 2024, in fact, the offers from the three giants are already quite high. The author analyzes that the real value of Pupu to the three giants can be viewed from two levels.

Level 1: An unbreakable wall - Regional barriers

Pupu has a penetration rate of over 70% in Fuzhou and Xiamen, with an annual sales volume of nearly 10 billion yuan in a single city; in Guangzhou, it has 180,000 daily orders on average, occupying 60% of the market and has firmly established its foothold. Therefore, the business infrastructure built by Pupu in these cities - the rider network, community penetration, local supply chain, etc. - is exactly what Meituan and Alibaba most want to acquire.

Therefore, Pupu's value has become a business barrier: not in the "warehouses", but in the "cities". Specifically, the "warehouses" may be replicable, but the "cities" are not. A retail system that has been operating in Fuzhou for nine years is not simply about "site selection + decoration + recruitment + goods stocking", but about the long - term cooperative relationships with 2,000 local suppliers, the default opening habits of users' mobile phones, and the delivery memories of riders who are familiar with every alley. There is no shortcut for these things, only time.

At the early stage, Hema entered Fuzhou with the help of New Huadu's supply chain, but still couldn't hold on until the end and was forced to withdraw from the market. Xiaoxiang Supermarket has always said that it wants to enter Fuzhou, but it hasn't materialized yet. Even Yonghui, in its home ground of Fuzhou, can't do anything about Pupu... In fact, it's not that the business of the giants can't beat Pupu, but that the cost of winning is too high and the time is too long. Instead of investing a huge amount of money and wasting a lot of time, it's more hassle - free to simply spend money to buy Pupu.

Level 2: A fertile ground for development - Derivative value

The first - level value of Pupu only explains why it is scarce, but does not explain why Pupu is worth $5 billion. After all, no matter how strong a regional leader is, if it can only rely on its existing market share, its valuation ceiling is limited.

What really makes the giants covet Pupu is its high - density orders in South China. Once combined with the national traffic system and supply chain capabilities of the giants, the incremental value it can release far exceeds "maintaining the status quo".

Here, we need to understand the fundamental difference between pre - warehouse and express e - commerce. The decisive factor in express e - commerce is traffic - large warehouses are used to ship goods with the aggregation of national traffic, and the one with more traffic wins. That's why Pinduoduo and Douyin e - commerce have emerged. However, the pre - warehouse is different: its fulfillment radius is only 3 - 5 kilometers, and the traffic pool covered by each warehouse is fixed. The decisive factor is not traffic, but density - if there are 100 home - delivery demands in a community every day, the one who first gets 60 orders to support a warehouse can survive, and the remaining 40 orders will be monopolized by the winner.

Density is the decisive factor because the largest cost item in the pre - warehouse is the fulfillment cost, and the effect of density in diluting the fulfillment cost is not linear, but multiplicative. When the daily average orders of a single warehouse increase from 3,000 to 5,000, the sorting efficiency improves, riders can deliver multiple orders in one trip, and the fixed storage costs are diluted - when these factors are combined, the profit does not increase by 60%, but may double or triple.

This is the logic of the second - level "fertile ground for development": Pupu's absolute density in Fujian + the national traffic of the giants = the replication and leap of density = the exponential explosion of future profits. The incremental value that a regional player cannot digest on its own can be fully utilized by the giants.

Going deeper, Pupu's "development value" is not limited to retail itself. The high - frequency consumption data it holds, such as what vegetables users buy, when they buy, what they change, and what they return... are the most granular "data treasures" in the era of AI retail. In addition, the 30 - minute fulfillment scenario of the pre - warehouse is also the most ideal "experimental field" for technologies such as unmanned delivery and intelligent scheduling. The investment and testing thresholds for these intelligent technologies are too high, and only financial backers like the three giants can afford them. Pupu just provides them with the scenarios and data for technology implementation.

Therefore, when the three giants compete for Pupu, they are not just competing for a "profitable pre - warehouse company", but for two things: a regional retail system that they may not be able to build even in ten years, and the derivative value that this system can release far beyond the current situation in the giants' ecosystems.

The game among the three giants: Who has the biggest cards and who is the most stingy?

1. Alibaba: The most urgent and with no way back

Alibaba is the one advancing the fastest in this acquisition competition - the audit team has already been on - site for due diligence. This speed is not the normal "look and then decide", but "I must have it".

There is only one reason: Hema is struggling to hold on in South China.

This is not an exaggeration. In the Guangzhou market, Pupu has 180,000 daily orders on average, while Hema only has 70,000. In the Fujian market, which is Pupu's absolute home ground, Hema has almost no presence. Hema's "store - warehouse integrated" model works in the north and the east of China, but in the South China market, where there are numerous street - side shops and the demand for the freshness of fresh produce is extremely high, Hema's supply chain shortcomings are infinitely magnified.

If Hema can't do well in the South China region, it's not a problem of one or two stores, but a chain reaction: the brand potential of Hema Fresh can't rise, the order volume of Hema's pre - warehouses can't increase, and the supply chain cost of Hema NB (discount stores) can't be reduced. South China is not just a regional market for Hema, but a key point to prove whether Hema can become a "national retail infrastructure".

By acquiring Pupu, Alibaba will get not only the warehouses and orders, but also a localized operation system that has been verified by South China users. This is exactly what Hema really lacks.

However, there is a question mark over Alibaba's determination: it previously acquired RT - Mart for Hema and sold it at a "rock - bottom price" in 2025. After having suffered a setback once, will Alibaba be willing to spend a large amount of money on Hema again? If the acquisition price of Pupu is pushed up to $5 billion or even higher, will Alibaba back out at the last moment, just like when it was competing to acquire Metro China?

2. Meituan: The most aggressive and the most dangerous

According to insiders, Meituan's role in this acquisition competition is to "desperately drive up the price".

However, "driving up the price" is just the surface. Meituan's real plan may be: I may not necessarily need Pupu, but I will never let Alibaba get Pupu, especially at a low price.

Think about Meituan's current situation: it already has the combination of Xiaoxiang Supermarket and Dingdong Maicai, its basic market in East China is stable, and Xiaoxiang has overtaken Pupu in the Guangdong market, with a promising future. From a pure business perspective, Pupu has the lowest marginal value for Meituan among the three.

However, from the perspective of the competitive landscape, if Pupu falls into Alibaba's hands, it means that Meituan will face a "Hema + Pupu" alliance in South China - Hema's brand and supply chain, combined with Pupu's warehouse network and users, pose a much greater threat to Meituan than the current standalone Pupu.

So, when Meituan drives up the price, it's not about seizing assets, but about increasing the cost for its competitors. This is the same logic as when Internet companies competed for exclusive copyrights in the past: for every extra dollar I spend, my competitor has to spend two more dollars; I may not necessarily buy, but I must make you pay more.

Moreover, the final outcome of a transaction with the purpose of driving up the price is very uncertain. For example, if the price of Pupu is finally pushed up to over $5 billion, will Alibaba still be willing to make an offer? If Alibaba backs out, will Meituan take it over? Or, is the ultimate goal of this price - driving transaction to make the deal fall through?

In addition, there is another issue that cannot be ignored for Meituan. Just after acquiring Dingdong, if Meituan acquires Pupu, will it trigger an anti - monopoly review? If Xiaoxiang + Dingdong + Pupu are merged, Meituan's share of self - operated pre - warehouses in South China will be extremely high. This may be another deep - seated reason why Meituan chooses to "drive up the price" rather than "really buy" - not that it doesn't want to buy, but that the acquisition may not pass the review.

3. JD.com: The most reluctant and the most calm

JD.com's participation is more of a mixture of "unwillingness" and "not being able to be absent".

According to market insiders, in the previous acquisition competition for Dingdong Maicai, JD.com actually reached a preliminary intention with Dingdong, but its offer was low and its decision - making was slow, and it was finally "outbid" by Meituan. Since then, JD.com has only had the Qixian brand in the self - operated pre - warehouse field, and its main layout is in the north, with almost no presence in South China and East China. Xu Xin of Capital Today represented JD.com in the negotiations, but it was more like an intermediary - Xu Xin has been following the pre - warehouse track for many years, understands both Pupu and the demands of all parties. Rather than being the "official representative" of JD.com, she is more like an influential intermediary in this game.

JD.com's real situation is: It needs pre - warehouses, but pre - warehouses are not its most urgent matter. In February 2026, JD.com launched the "Hundred - Billion Supermarket" channel, indicating that it is serious about instant retail - but in the battlefield of instant retail, JD.com can temporarily maintain its presence with the O2O model of JD Home + Walmart. If the price of Pupu is reasonable, acquiring it will be a bonus; if the price is pushed up to an unreasonable level, backing out will not cause much harm.

So, in this game, JD.com is more like a "troublemaker" - its presence may force Alibaba to pay more and make Meituan more distracted, while it can advance or retreat freely.

From $2 billion to $5 billion: Why is the valuation range so large?

Let's return to the valuation of this transaction: from $2 billion to $5 billion, a valuation elasticity of 2.5 times. This is not the pricing logic of a normal merger and acquisition transaction.

However, in this transaction, this unusual logic makes sense because the value of Pupu to the three giants is different.

For Alibaba, Pupu is a strategic asset that "must be acquired". If calculated using an ROI framework: if Hema were to build Pupu's warehouse network, supply chain, and user base in South China from scratch, it would take at least 5 - 8 years and tens of billions of dollars in investment, and it may not succeed. Spending $5 billion to buy a proven result, for Alibaba, whether it is expensive depends on how bad the answer to "what if we don't buy" is.

For Meituan, the valuation of Pupu depends on the offers from its competitors. It doesn't need to calculate how much Pupu is worth, but only how much loss "letting Alibaba get Pupu" will bring to itself. If this loss is greater than $2 billion, then driving the price up to $5 billion is a reasonable defensive expenditure.

For JD.com, the valuation of Pupu depends on "whether there are better alternatives". At present, Pupu is the only independently profitable target in the pre - warehouse track, and there are no alternatives. Scarcity itself affects the pricing.

So, the real meaning of this valuation range is: the price of this transaction is not determined by the intrinsic value of the target, but by the strategic anxiety level of the buyers.

The deeper the anxiety, the higher the price. Alibaba is the most anxious, so it is advancing the fastest; Meituan is the least anxious, so it is best at driving up the price; JD.com's anxiety level is in the middle, so it is the most flexible. However, the premium driven by anxiety is inherently unstable. Dingdong Maicai has over 1,000 pre - warehouses, 7 million monthly active users, and has achieved GAAP profitability for seven consecutive quarters, with a fair valuation of about $1 billion. Pupu's last