The CEO and founder of Doordash, an online food ordering and food delivery platform, Tony Xu has joined the board of directors of Meta Inc, owned by Mark Zuckerberg.
The Meta Inc hierarchy, who made the announcement known in a statement on Tuesday, said the appointment will take immediate effect. Prior to the appointment Xu served as Doordash CEO since 2013, becoming the board chair in November 2020, seven years later.
The latest addition to the Meta board brings the board of directors of the Facebook parent company to 10.
Tony Xu obviously ecstatic about the new role said in a Press Release:
“Millions of local merchants use Meta’s tools to grow and run their businesses every month. I look forward to working with the board as the company enters the next stage of its journey”.
The announcement is coming after Meta Inc focus on commerce has been highlighted in recent years, with the company introducing several shopping features across it tripartite apps (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp). The social media giant has integrated shopping and e-commerce features directly within its services to prevent users from leaving its apps.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement outlined how the company will leverage on Xu experience in solving complex challenges in the Metaverse creation, as commerce is expected to play a major role in the metaverse, an indication that Xu’s expertise will be needed to advise the board on such matters.
“Tony has built a great service for millions of people to get food and more from hundreds of thousands of restaurants and small businesses,” Zuckerberg said in the statement. “I’ve always thought it’s important to have great tech leaders on our board, and Tony has direct experience both running a tech company and solving complex challenges in commerce. I look forward to learning from his perspective as we build towards the metaverse.”
Meta’s has in its board of directors Zuckerberg himself; Peggy Alford, the executive vice president of global sales at PayPal; Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz; Drew Houston, the co-founder and CEO of Dropbox; Nancy Killefer, a retired senior partner at McKinsey & Company; Robert Kimmitt, Meta’s lead independent director and senior international counsel at WilmerHale LLP; Sheryl K. Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Meta; Peter Thiel, managing partner at Founders Fund and Tracey T. Travis, the executive vice president and CFO of The Estée Lauder Companies.