The deal lets members of the online retailer's loyalty club use Grubhub without any delivery fees on orders over US $12 in more than 4,000 US cities ahead of Amazon's July Prime Day marketing blitz starting Tuesday.
Shares in Just Eat Takeaway were up 16 per cent at €15.98 at 0309 GMT in Amsterdam trading. The deal is a major relief for Europe's largest meals company, whose stock had fallen 70 per cent this year.
The shareholders asked it to find a partner for Grubhub, which it bought for US $5.8 billion last year. Demand has waned since the height of the epidemic, and it has lost market share to Doordash and Uber Eats.
Amazon will get warrants representing 2 per cent of Grubhub's shares, and an additional 13 per cent of shares that are conditional on the deal to bring Grubhub enough customers.
Uber shares fell about 4 per cent on Wednesday, while Doordash stock fell about 8 per cent. Just Eat Takeaway stated in a statement that it continues to look at the partial or full sale of Grubhub, though there is no certainty that a deal will be reached.
According to a note on Amazon, analysts from JPMorgan said it would bring new customers and strengthen Grubhub's position in the United States, similar to the partnership Amazon has had with Just Eat rival Deliveroo in Britain.
The move improves JET's position in potentially selling Grubhub analysts wrote, as Grubhub is now only a smaller part of Just Eat Takeaway's portfolio, representing about 20 per cent of estimated 2023 revenues.
There are more than 200 million Prime members, according to Amazon. It raised the annual cost of membership to US $139 from US $119 in the United States this year and aimed to show that the higher price-tag is worth it.
After exiting the business in 2019 due to a lack of enough restaurant supply, analysts said this was an easy, inexpensive way for Amazon to resume US restaurant delivery.
Analysts at RBC Capital Markets wrote.
The deal allows Amazon, which has for years acquired warrants to buy shares in air transportation and food distribution companies, to support the online retailer's business without the need for any money for a total acquisition.
The company said that Grubhub's gross assets were worth around €6.5 billion US $6.67 billion at the end of 2021, and it made a pretax loss of 403 million euros in that year.