The agentic shopping assistant is set to be tested on Sprouts Farmers Market’s website and app in the coming months, with Kroger’s iPhone app also involved.

The expanded relationship will create opportunities to reach customers with relevant offers through retail media and enhanced engagement with consumer-packaged goods brands.

Instacart and Kroger extended access to Kroger’s Express Delivery through Kroger’s website as part of the broader collaboration, though specific expansion details were not provided.

The partnership aims to broaden Express Delivery access to include a wider range of customers and products, maintaining 30-minute delivery for fresh items and ready-to-heat meals.

Catalog Engine enriches catalogs with nutritional and contextual data to enable smarter search, recommendations, and substitutions.

Sprouts’ users will receive meal plans and recipe suggestions tailored to dietary preferences through the Cart Assistant and related AI tools.

This move signals Instacart’s shift toward higher-margin software and services, complementing its delivery revenues and ad/tech offerings.

Express Delivery is expanding to reach more customers, with delivery times as fast as 30 minutes for fresh foods and ready-to-heat meals.

The collaboration will leverage AI, including Instacart’s Cart Assistant, to deliver agentic shopping experiences on the Kroger iOS app, assisting with meal planning, cart building, and personalized recommendations.

Instacart launches AI Solutions, a new suite of enterprise offerings designed to help grocers of all sizes compete in an AI-first ecosystem across online storefronts, stores, and shopping carts.

The service rollout will include Kroger Co.’s iPhone app as part of the expansion.

The Kroger partnership, with roots dating back to 2017, has included milestones like Express Delivery, marketing solutions, fuel-points integration, and AI-powered Caper Carts to drive store traffic and deliver value to customers.

The report cites multiple sources and situates the announcement within Instacart’s broader strategy of expanding retailer technology solutions.

The system can generate three menu ideas and add ingredients to the cart for faster checkout, enhancing personalized shopping experiences.

The collaboration supports Kroger’s broader eCommerce and in-store presence, reinforcing its commitment to serving millions daily and advancing its digital shopping experience.

Collaborations with Good Food Holdings and Sprouts Farmers Market illustrate real-world pilots of Store View and Cart Assistant to improve customer experiences.

Instacart is helping retailers enrich product catalogs with detailed nutritional and ingredient data to improve recommendation accuracy.

The trend is echoed by Amazon and Walmart launching AI tools for sellers and shoppers, signaling rising adoption across the sector.

Catalog Engine delivers AI-enhanced product catalogs with rich data—nutrition, ingredients, health tags, and allergens—drawn from 1.3 billion data points to improve search, recommendations, and substitutions.

Industry context notes that agentic AI is reshaping commerce, with prompts becoming the interface and retail tech stacks reconfiguring for autonomous transactions.

Agentic shopping envisions AI agents helping families plan meals and build baskets through conversation.

Instacart reports partnerships with over 1,800 retail banners across North America to enable online shopping, delivery, and pickup.

Industry context notes from Grocery Dive and others illuminate broader AI grocery trends surrounding this initiative.

This move positions Instacart as a technology provider for grocery retailers, extending its reach beyond its own app to retailer-branded storefronts.

AI-centric capabilities aim to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency, driving traffic and improving delivery quality for Kroger.

Cart Assistant is already being tested by Sprouts Farmers Market to enhance personalized shopping experiences.

Kroger plans to roll out Cart Assistant to shoppers via Apple’s iOS, with no timeline yet for other platforms.

Additional AI features include an AI-driven catalog system and agentic retail data analysis to deliver business insights.

OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft technologies underpin Instacart’s agentic commerce and AI integrations, with industry momentum highlighted by OpenAI’s late-2025 announcements.