The news: Even as everyday expenses take up a larger share of consumer budgets, shoppers continue to use Instacart. Rather than pulling back from grocery delivery, they are shifting orders toward club and discount retailers on the platform, a pattern that benefits Instacart given the breadth of its retail partnerships.

The numbers:

• Instacart earned 57 cents per share, up 54% YoY and in line with expectations.
• Revenues rose 14% to $1.02 billion, slightly ahead of the expected $1.01 billion.
• Gross transaction value increased 13% to $10.29 billion, its first quarter above $10 billion.
• Advertising and other revenues rose 16% to $286 million, marking the platform’s fastest ad growth since Q3 2023 and signaling that brands continue to value its high-intent audience even as consumers tighten spending.

Why it matters: The results highlight the resilience of Instacart’s model even as macroeconomic headwinds mount and competition intensifies.

• Amazon is leaning further into grocery, as it added perishables to same-day delivery last year, which helped it generate more than $150 billion in annual US gross grocery sales.
• Walmart is also expanding localized assortments to strengthen its 19.9% share of the US grocery market, per Numerator data for the 12 months ended March 2026.

Implications for retailers: Online grocery remains substantially underpenetrated, with just 13.5% of US grocery sales expected to occur online in 2026, per our forecast. That gives Instacart and its retail partners room to grow even as the competitive environment tightens.

As Amazon and Walmart double down on grocery, Instacart has an opportunity to position itself to retailers as a partner (rather than a competitor) that can help them build ecommerce capabilities, expand assortment, and improve last-mile fulfillment without heavy upfront investment. In a market where scale and logistics increasingly determine share, that support can act as a buffer for merchants that can’t match Amazon or Walmart’s infrastructure.

Instacart’s advertising business adds another strategic advantage. As brands shift spending toward high-intent retail media, its closed-loop measurement and purchase data make it a compelling alternative to broader digital channels. For partner grocers, that turns Instacart from a fulfillment cost center into a revenue-generating asset.

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