Instacart has launched an artificial intelligence-powered grocery shopping assistant that can turn conversations, recipes and grocery lists into personalized shopping carts for customers in Canada and the United States.
The company introduced Clementine on Wednesday as part of its broader AI strategy, while also announcing the expansion of its enterprise Cart Assistant to additional grocery retailers.
Clementine is designed to use customers’ preferences, previous shopping behaviour and real-time store inventory to help with meal planning, grocery lists, reordering and finding deals. Instacart said the tool is available to most Canadian and U.S. customers through its app and website.
“Every night, millions of families ask the same question: ‘What’s for dinner?’ Not knowing the answer, let alone what to shop for, is one of the most universal human experiences, and a problem Instacart is built to solve,” said Chris Rogers, CEO of Instacart. “We’ve spent nearly 15 years learning how families shop and eat, and Clementine puts that knowledge to work. It learns from the preferences you share and the way you’ve shopped on Instacart. It can help you stay on budget and surface what’s actually in stock at your chosen store, handling enough of the weekly planning that the mental load actually feels lighter.”
The company said Clementine’s technology is supported by data from more than 1.6 billion lifetime orders, a catalogue of more than two 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 assistant can generate personalized recipes or surface options from publishers, apply household preferences such as gluten-free, vegetarian, nut-free or organic choices, identify promotions and lower-cost alternatives, and assemble repeat orders based on previous purchases.
Customers can also use Clementine for occasion-based shopping, such as preparing food for a football watch party, or upload a photo of a handwritten grocery list or a screenshot of a digital list.
Instacart said early results show customers initially using Clementine for simpler tasks such as restocking before moving to more complex uses such as recipe discovery. Orders placed with Clementine have more items on average than Instacart’s typical basket and exceed the company’s stated average basket size of US$115.
“Grocery shopping is one of the most routine things people do, and also one of the most personal,” said John Adams, vice-president and head of product at Instacart. “What we built with Clementine is a system that understands both of those things – not just what you need, but how you eat, what you love, and what’s on the shelves at your store right now. Whatever you’re craving or planning for, Clementine can get you there. The more you use it, the more it feels like a natural part of how your household shops, becoming something you reach for week after week.”
The company is also expanding Cart Assistant, its white-label AI shopping tool for grocery retailers. The technology combines Instacart’s grocery data with a retailer’s catalogue and customer data and can be customized to include a retailer’s branding, loyalty integration and recipe content.
Food Bazaar, Heritage Grocers Group and Woodman’s are now using Cart Assistant, while ALDI U.S., Harmon’s, The Save Mart Companies and Stew Leonard’s are among the retailers expected to follow.
Instacart said Cart Assistant allows grocery retailers to offer AI-assisted shopping directly through their own websites and apps, including capabilities such as surfacing deals and recipes and building shopping carts.
The company has also partnered with Anthropic, OpenAI and Google so grocery shopping conversations that begin through Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or AI Mode in Google Search can be completed through Instacart, allowing users to order from their preferred retailer for delivery or pickup.
Clementine is available through the Instacart app and website. Most Canadian and U.S. customers can access it by selecting a retailer and choosing the Clementine icon on mobile or the corresponding option in the desktop navigation.
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