Instacart has introduced a suite of AI solutions specifically designed for the complexities of grocery retailing, featuring a white-label customer-facing agentic AI-powered shopping helper called Cart Assistant. This personalized omnichannel shopping companion supports meal planning and nutrition and is capable of learning from each customer’s preferences and purchase history.
In the next few months, Sprouts Farmers Market will introduce Cart Assistant across its website and app (powered by Instacart’s Storefront Pro ecommerce solution) and its Caper Carts shopping cart technology. Separately, Kroger will launch Cart Assistant through its first-party iOS app.
“At Kroger, we want to make shopping easier, ensuring families can find their favorite foods whenever they want them,” said Yael Cosset, EVP and Chief Digital Officer, The Kroger Co. in a statement. “Instacart is a trusted technology collaborator and we continuously evolve to meet our customers where they are. Together, we are bringing next-generation AI to our customers in the Kroger iOS App, giving our customers a more personalized and convenient grocery experience.”
New AI Solutions Analyze Agentic Activity
In addition to the customer-facing technology enhancement, Instacart has introduced new tools for business intelligence, including analysis of agentic AI activity. The Instacart technology, which can be layered onto a retailer’s existing tech stack, uses agentic analytics capabilities to understand retail data models, run sophisticated analyses and deliver tailored insights about how consumers interact with the tools through dedicated portals for merchandising, marketing, operations and leadership teams.
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Instacart also recently launched Store View, an inventory intelligence solution designed to give retailers a real-time view of what’s on their shelves. Store View combines images and videos captured by Instacart employees and the company’s smart shopping caddies, Caper Carts, with advanced computer vision models to automatically identify which products are in stock, running low or out of stock. Store View is already live with Good Food Holdings and will launch soon at McKeever’s.
Making Product Catalogs More AI-Friendly
Instacart also has launched Catalog Engine, designed to help retailers elevate their product catalogs to an AI-first standard and give them a richer, more contextual understanding of every item they sell. The system uses AI-driven extraction of over 1.3 billion data points, powered by vision-language models (VLMs) and human-in-the-loop (HITL) validation, to enhance product data with details like nutrition facts, health tags, allergens and contextual attributes.
“AI is transforming how people shop for groceries and feed their families, and Instacart is uniquely positioned to help retailers — from national chains and regional favorites to local independents — harness that change and drive meaningful results for their customers and business,” said Chris Rogers, CEO of Instacart in a statement. “These new AI solutions mark the next chapter in our enterprise story — empowering retailers to turn generative and agentic AI into a true competitive edge.”
Instacart has made significant efforts to support in-store shopping, including its Caper Cart deployments and in-store media integrations
