DoorDash co-founder and CEO joins Meta's board of directors

DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu has joined Meta's board of directors, the Facebook parent company announced on Tuesday. Xu has served as CEO of DoorDash since 2013 and was appointed the company's board chair in November 2020. Meta says Xu's appointment is effective immediately. Xu's appointment brings the total number of people on Meta's board of directors to 10.

“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,” said Xu in a press release about the announcement.

Today's annoucement comes as Meta has been heavily focused on commerce over the past few years, as the company has introduced numerous shopping features across its apps, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The company has been focused on implementing shopping and e-commerce features directly within its services to prevent users from leaving its apps.

In a statement, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined that Xu has experience in solving complex challenges in commerce and that the company will leverage Xu's expertise as it creates the Metaverse. Commerce will play a major role in the metaverse, which indicates that Xu will likely 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 board of directors includes Zuckerberg; 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.