Instacart AI Assistant Builds Bigger Baskets, Lifts Revenue

Instacart began rolling out an AI assistant that builds a grocery cart from a conversation or an uploaded photo. Early tests show orders placed with the assistant are larger than typical orders, the company said in a Thursday blog post.

The assistant taps live inventory data from roughly 100,000 stores across North America. It only adds in-stock items. It learns the customer's preferred brands from past orders and finds sale items. Instacart said the AI is now reaching millions of U.S. customers through its app and website. Full coverage in the U.S. and Canada is expected within months.

CEO Chris Rogers said the system draws on a decade of grocery data and more than 1.6 billion lifetime orders. "We're using that to build the gold standard of agentic grocery AI," he said during the company's first-quarter earnings call in May.

The assistant changes basket economics. A larger basket means more revenue from the same delivery cost. Instacart earns per-order fees and commissions. If the trend holds across the rollout, that is a structural margin improvement.

There are risks. Making live inventory work across 100,000 stores is a technical challenge that has not yet been proven at full scale. Amazon Fresh and Walmart are also investing in AI shopping tools. The assistant cuts substitutions and refunds by only including in-stock items, which is a hidden cost saver.

A PYMNTS Intelligence survey found 64% of shoppers expect to use AI agents at least occasionally within two years, and 30% expect to do so frequently. "That is a very high level of confidence for a new technology," the report said. "Merchants should take this as a clear sign that agentic commerce is moving from experimentation toward mass adoption."

Instacart expects the full rollout across the U.S. and Canada within months, the company said.