Grocery technology company Instacart has unveiled Clementine, an AI-powered grocery shopping assistant now available to customers across North America on the Instacart Marketplace.
Clementine, which has been 15 years in the making, is built around the hardest parts of grocery shopping: deciding what to make for dinner, shopping the way a family actually eats, and staying on budget without the mental load.
Messages like, “I need a week of budget-friendly kid lunches,“ “high-protein easy dinners for two,“ or “order my usuals“ become personalized, ready-to-buy carts in seconds. The experience is grounded in what’s actually available on shelves in real time at a customer’s chosen store.
“Every night, millions of families ask the same question, ‘What’s for dinner?’ Not knowing the answer, let alone what to shop for,” said Chris Rogers. CEO of Instacart. It’s a problem Instacart is built to solve.”
The company’s experience of looking into how families shop and eat was put to use in Clementine, which learns from the preferences consumers share and the way they’ve previously shopped on Instacart. “It can help you stay on budget and surface what’s actually in stock at your chosen store, handling a lot of the weekly planning,” Rogers said.
The Foundation Behind The Interface
What sets Clementine apart is the foundation that powers it, including more than 1.6 billion lifetime orders, a catalog of more than 2 billion items, and more than 10 million daily inventory signals from nearly 100,000 stores across more than 2,200 retail banners in North America. The retailer-agnostic experience is baked into the program. Consumers can access any retailer on the marketplace experience and access it with the user interface.
Clementine gives consumers the parameters they need with the preferences, budgets and health constraints of a family or household. The interface gets more personally-aligned the more it’s used, said Laura Jones, chief marketing officer of Instacart, noting that Clementine responds to a consumer’s purchase history. Even if it’s a new customer, the interface will improve as it draws from the 1.6 billion orders on the platform.
Shoppers can create a new cart or ask Clementine to shop for the usuals, items they buy week after week. It’s an experience that doesn’t require the consumer to learn something new. Clementine does the heavy lifting when it comes to finding the right recipe, generating personalized recipes on the spot or surfacing curated options from publishers such as Eating Well and All Recipes.
Speed To Market
“We want Clementine to be lightweight and speedy,” Jones said. “When it’s lightweight and simple, the experience it that much more expedited. People are asking to keep the shopping journey quick and fluid. It has to do with building trust through quality and consistency. The more information we can leverage from consumers, the more questions we can ask, the better the results will be.”
“So much of the brand is about mental space, the bar we hold for quality is incredibly high,” said Shaun Harris, senior director of product design. “We don’t want to push something out unless we feel confident that it’s solving a problem for consumers. We initially rolled Clementine out to a small percentage of users.”
While Millennials have been prominent Instacart users, the platform has also seen growth among Gen Z consumers. The company’s goal is to serve the entire market. Clementine’s average orders are larger than the $115 average basket size. “We have a range of retailers already on the platform, from very affordable to more premium,” Jones said. “It’s their choice where they want to shop. We’re making it as easy as possible.”
The online grocery market is defined by format bifurcation and shifting loyalty, said Consumer Edge. The brands gaining market share are those with format clarity, private-label depth, and a value proposition that resonates across every income cohort.
Grocery Projections
The ecommerce landscape continues to evolve, with online grocery shopping emerging as one of its fastest-growing segments, said SaleHoo. In the U.S., online grocery sales are projected to reach $238 billion this year, reflecting a shift in consumer behavior driven by convenience and technology.
“Among the companies leading this transformation is Instacart, which has grown to become a household name for millions of Americans,” SaleHoo said, adding that Instacart this year is projected to maintain a 21.6% market share of the U.S. online grocery market. That means more than $1 in every $5 spent on online groceries is processed through Instacart.
Harris was involved in developing Clementine’s visual identity, which was a collaborative effort. There’s form and function and they come together to create a feeling, he said. “That’s what we’re really trying to create here. We want it to emote, and want somebody to want to use the product.”
The beauty of Clementine is that it’s designed to be flexible, Harris said. “Needs come up, family dynamics shift and macro dynamics come into play,” he explained. “What Clementine does is build on what you’re already doing and modifies or adjusts. It could be seasonal or year after year. This interface allows us to work with these dynamics that are unpredictable and ephemeral. It shows the flexibility of what the platform was built to do.”
Show Me The Deals
Since many consumers have sticker shock in grocery stores, where tariffs and the war in Iran — which is impacting supply chains with the Straight of Hormuz closed – higher prices are finding their way to products.
Clementine can show shoppers what’s on sale and surface deals, said Jones, adding, “sometimes it’s a bit of a treasure hunt to find what you’re looking for, so with deals, it should give you the ability to stick to a budget or hunt down deals.”
Clementine, Instacart’s own AI chatbot has linked with generative AI companies such as OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and others to help define how grocery shopping works across the next generation of digital agents and ensuring its retail partners are well-positioned to succeed.
Instacart is diversifying its business. It launched last year AI Solutions, a suite of enterprise offerings designed to help grocers of all sizes compete in an AI-first world. Built specifically for the complexity of the grocery businesses, the solutions extend Instacart’s technology across online storefronts, store shelves, and shopping carts – helping retailers deliver smarter, more personalized shopping experiences through AI.
In the last four quarters, Instacart beat analyst estimates twice and missed twice. For the second quarter of 2026, the company increased total revenue by 14%, driven by stronger-than-expected advertising and other revenue performance, which grew 16% and outpaced GTV growth. Instacart reported expanded adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flow year-over-year.
Barclays in August raised the firm’s price target on Instacart (CART) to $77 from $69 and kept an overweight rating on the shares. The company is seeing record high growth in an increasingly competitive environment, Barclays said in a research note.
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