California-based grocery technology company Instacart has introduced an AI-powered grocery shopping assistant for customers across North America.

Called Clementine, it 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.

The company also announced more grocery partners are live with Cart Assistant, its white-label enterprise AI shopping assistant, giving retailers a branded shopping experience powered by their own catalogue and customer data, and made smarter by the same technology and intelligence behind Clementine.

Messages such as “I need a week of budget-friendly kid lunches”, “high-protein easy dinners for two” or “order my usuals” become a personalised, ready-to-buy carts in seconds. The experience is grounded in what’s actually available on shelves in real time from the customer’s chosen store.

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

Clementine is built on a foundation of more than 1.6 billion lifetime orders, a catalogue of more than two billion items and more than ten million daily inventory signals from nearly 100,000 stores across more than 2200 retail banners in North America. This foundation powers the company’s inventory intelligence, helping Clementine understand what’s on store shelves in real time, and providing a deep understanding of how families actually eat, what they buy week after week and what’s on sale at their store at any given moment.

Whether it’s gluten-free, vegetarian, nut-free or organic, Clementine (www.instacart.com/p/clementine) makes suggestions based on how a household actually eats. An expanded preference centre lets shoppers set their choices once and Clementine applies them across the experience. It can surface relevant deals and promotions and help users find lower-cost alternatives. They can even snap a photo of a handwritten list, or screenshot a digital one, and Clementine turns it into a list that can be added to a cart in seconds.

“Grocery shopping is one of the most routine things people do, and also one of the most personal,” said John Adams, vice president at Instacart (www.instacart.com). “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.”

Cart Assistant is Instacart’s white-label AI shopping assistant, built for grocers who want to offer their own branded agentic shopping experience on their web site and app. It combines Instacart’s grocery intelligence with the retailer’s catalogue and customer data to create a branded assistant that knows what customers need, surfacing relevant deals and recipes, and building carts without requiring them to search item by item. Grocers can customise everything from the name and tone to loyalty integration and recipe content, so the experience feels entirely their own.

Food Bazaar, Heritage Grocers Group and Woodman’s are now live with Cart Assistant, with Aldi US, Harmon’s, Save Mart, Stew Leonard’s and additional partners to follow.

Instacart has also partnered with Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google so 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.