Instacart launches AI assistant Clementine, agentic commerce integrations

Instacart has launched an artificial intelligence assistant, Clementine, for grocery shopping support while adding new partners for its existing enterprise AI tool Cart Assistant.

As of Sept. 9, Instacart users in North America can tap Clementine for “the hardest parts of grocery shopping,” according to the company. It referred to decisions such as what to make for a meal, “shopping the way a family actually eats” and staying within budget. Instacart said the AI assistant helps users develop a personalized cart in seconds. It added that it based the Clementine experience on “what’s actually available on shelves in real time from the customer’s chosen store, so people can spend less time figuring out what’s for dinner and more time actually enjoying it.”

Chris Rogers, CEO at Instacart, said in a statement that millions of families ask themselves what’s for dinner on a given night. They don’t know the answer or what to shop for, he added.

“We’ve spent nearly 15 years learning how families shop and eat, and Clementine puts that knowledge to work,” Rogers said. “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.”

Instacart said early results show that its customers start with tasks such as restocking before using the AI tool for “higher-order use cases,” such as recipe discovery.

On average, Instacart said, customers placing orders through the Clementine AI assistant include more items than other users. Those customers using Clementine tend to also exceed $115 in average order value, according to Instacart.

How the Instacart Clementine AI assistant works

Instacart said its Clementine AI assistant factors in data from more than 1.6 billion lifetime orders and a catalog of more than 2 billion items. Additionally, Instacart said, Clementine uses more than 10 million daily inventory signals from about 100,000 locations across 2,200 retail operators in North America.

According to Instacart, that foundation powers its inventory intelligence, allowing the Clementine AI to understand what products are available in real time as well as what’s on sale at any given moment.

Instacart said its Clementine AI assistant can:

• generate personalized recipes and display curated existing options
• make suggestions based on a household’s dietary restrictions and preferences
• help customers find deals and promotions, as well as lower-cost alternatives
• reorder automatically
• create occasion-centered shopping lists
• upload grocery lists, whether handwritten or digital screenshots, converting them into lists of products to add to cart

“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, in a statement. “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.”

Instacart adds partners for white-label AI tool Cart Assistant

In addition to Clementine, Instacart offers what it describes as a white-label AI tool, Cart Assistant. It said that tool is “for grocers who want to offer their own branded agentic shopping experience on their website and app.”

Instacart said the Cart Assistant combines its grocery data with a retailer’s catalog and customer data. That helps it to create a branded assistant that can suggest relevant deals and recipes. At the same time, it helps users to build carts without searching for products item by item. The company said grocers can customize the name, tone, loyalty integration and recipe content.

Instacart said current retailers using Cart Assistant include Food Bazaar, Heritage Grocers Group and Woodman’s. It said Harmon’s, The Save Mart, Stew Leonard’s and more companies will follow.

Additionally, Instacart said it has partnered with Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. It said grocery conversations that begin on Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or AI Mode in Google Search “can be seamlessly completed on Instacart, where users can place an order from their preferred retailer for delivery or pickup.”

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