The news: Instacart rolled out a suite of AI-powered tools designed to help grocers deliver more personalized shopping experiences in-store and online. The tools integrate grocers’ brand catalog into AI chat experiences.

Zooming in: The capabilities focus on five key areas:

• Cart Assistant: An AI shopping companion that helps customers with meal planning, budgeting, and nutrition, while learning from their preferences and purchase history to anticipate future needs. Grocers can integrate Cart Assistant into their websites through Instacart’s Storefront Pro or embed it in Instacart’s Caper Carts. Sprouts Farmers Market plans to roll it out across its website, app, and Caper Carts in the coming months, and Kroger will launch it in its iOS app.
• Agentic Commerce: Instacart is connecting genAI companies with retailers on the Instacart Marketplace, which should help grocers drive incremental sales through AI-powered shopping experiences.
• Store View: A computer vision–powered feature that combines images and videos to help grocers monitor shelf inventory, identifying when items are in stock, running low, or out of stock. Store View is currently live with Good Food Holdings and will soon launch at McKeever’s.
• Catalog Engine: A tool that transforms standard product listings into AI-ready catalogs, enriching them with nutrition facts, health tags, and contextual details. This enables smarter search results, recommendations, and substitutions that better reflect shoppers’ intent.
• Agentic Analytics: An AI-driven analytics platform that aims to make grocers’ data actionable. Built on Instacart’s AI architecture, it lets partners query data in natural language and uncover tailored insights across merchandising, marketing, operations, and leadership—helping them find everything from which campaigns drive the most lift to how fulfillment speed affects retention.

Our take: Instacart is following the path paved by retail giants in rolling out genAI-powered tools to strengthen ties with its partners.

• Amazon recently enhanced its Seller Assistant, which uses agentic AI to automate routine tasks like product listings and ad creation, as well as more complex work such as inventory planning and product development.
• Walmart introduced “super agents” for shoppers, sellers, and suppliers, including its Marty agent, which helps suppliers analyze performance and launch ad campaigns.

Still, Instacart’s strategy makes sense in an increasingly competitive space. The more it can use emerging technologies to simplify life for both grocery shoppers and retailers, the stickier its platform will become.