Welcome Caper AI to Instacart!

We’re excited to share that today we announced our acquisition of Caper AI (“Caper”), a leading AI-powered cart and checkout platform. 

Over the years, Instacart has been at the forefront of helping retailers move their businesses online so they can grow and meet the evolving needs of their customers. This includes our comprehensive retailer enablement platform that spans the Instacart marketplace, robust ecommerce enterprise services, fulfillment technology to support delivery and pickup capabilities, last-mile delivery, and much more. As we look ahead, we’re focused on helping retailers unify the in-store and online shopping experience for customers no matter how they choose to shop. 

That’s where Caper comes in. We believe their technology represents a leap forward for our industry and creates a new way for us to help our partners invent the future of grocery. Caper’s cutting-edge, AI-powered shopping carts and automated checkout counters bring together online and offline shopping to create a completely new in-store experience for customers. Caper’s powerful object recognition system auto-detects items using a set of cameras positioned around a smart shopping cart, and then uses a deep learning algorithm to match the images to a database of over 20 million items. This allows customers to place items into their cart without having to scan or weigh them, and check out right at the cart. Caper also develops smart checkout counters that use cameras and a weight sensor to auto-detect items placed on its counter, creating an easier and faster express checkout flow for customers at grocery and convenience stores.  

Caper’s carts also feature touch-enabled screens that let customers navigate brick-and-mortar grocery store aisles more seamlessly and browse product suggestions based on what’s already in their cart. Over time, we expect to integrate Caper’s technology into the Instacart app and the ecommerce websites and apps of our retail partners, allowing customers to build online shopping lists and browse recipes ahead of time and check off their lists as they go. And, for Instacart shoppers who shop on behalf of customers, they can also utilize the carts to find items more efficiently and bypass long checkout lines. 

Caper’s technology provides brick-and-mortar retailers of all sizes with a more customizable plug-and-play solution that they can easily deploy in their stores, creating compelling experiences for customers and driving meaningful growth for their businesses. Their smart carts are currently deployed at some of the leading North American retailers, including Instacart partners Kroger and Wakefern, as well as Sobeys in Canada. This is in addition to their smart checkout counters in convenience stores.

In addition to acquiring Caper AI’s technology, we’re delighted to welcome the Caper team to the Instacart family. The global Caper team is based primarily in New York City and Shanghai, China, and will bring new hardware expertise to Instacart’s already deep product and technology team. 

 This acquisition is the latest in a series of deep investments in our suite of enterprise technology services – solutions that help power the comprehensive ecommerce platforms of retailers across North America. This news comes on the heels of our recent acquisition of FoodStorm, which offers order-ahead and catering technology for retailers so they can ensure more customers are turning to them for everyday meals.

To learn more about our acquisition of Caper AI, you can read the full press release here.

Instacart

Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.