The news: Uber Eats is boosting its grocery delivery push with an AI assistant.

• The feature, called Cart Assistant, helps customers build a shopping cart using text or images, such as a handwritten grocery list or screenshot of recipe ingredients.
• It can automatically consider product availability and offer store-level details like prices and applicable promotions.

Zooming out: The new tool is part of a larger effort from Uber to integrate agentic AI across its platform and provide more value to users, Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga told Axios.

Over time, Uber plans for these AI-powered tools to act more proactively—anticipating user desires, simplifying complex tasks like multi-store grocery runs, and reducing friction that can make online shopping feel time-consuming or overwhelming.

We expect Uber’s grocery sales will grow just 14.1% YoY in 2027, down from 47.2% YoY growth in 2025, indicating a need for the company to differentiate its grocery offering and increase appeal to consumers.

Why it matters: Grocery is a natural proving ground for AI because it’s built on high-frequency, low-stakes, repeat purchases. That makes it easier for shoppers to hand off decisions to automatically replenish staples like milk and eggs, suggest ingredients for a recipe, and surface relevant promotions.

If shoppers rely on an assistant to interpret lists and auto-fill carts, brand visibility will depend less on shelf placement and more on how products surface in algorithmic suggestions.

For retailers and CPG brands, that raises the stakes around real-time inventory data, competitive pricing, and retail media strategies.

It could also start to untangle loyalty: If Uber becomes the layer that manages consumers’ shopping lists, surfaces substitutions, and optimizes the cart, consumers may feel more loyalty to the platform than to the underlying grocer(s). That could weaken retailer relationships while strengthening Uber Eats’ role as the primary shopping interface.

Implications for brands: The new feature could push brands to view Uber Eats not just as a delivery partner, but as an AI-mediated retail media gatekeeper.

If and when the assistant takes on a bigger role in shaping consumers’ carts, brands will need to invest in richer product metadata, real-time inventory accuracy, sharper pricing, and smarter promotions to increase their odds of surfacing in its algorithmic recommendations.