The grocery delivery giant is betting that 14 years of shopping data and 1.6 billion lifetime orders can make its AI smarter than the competition.
Instacart has officially rolled out Clementine, a conversational AI shopping assistant, to millions of customers across the United States. The feature, which went live between June 16 and 18, is embedded directly into the Instacart app and website, letting users plan meals, explore recipes, and build shopping lists through plain-language conversation.
What Clementine actually does #
Users can activate the assistant by tapping an orange Clementine icon (or a green diamond, depending on the interface) within the app or on desktop. From there, it works like a chat-based shopping concierge.
Ask it to suggest a weeknight dinner for four, and it will pull together a recipe, populate a cart with the right ingredients, and cross-reference real-time inventory at your local store. It draws on user purchase history to personalize recommendations. The underlying intelligence is built on top of Instacart’s proprietary grocery data models, trained on more than 14 years of shopping behavior and approximately 1.6 billion lifetime orders placed across nearly 100,000 North American grocery stores.
Instacart has also integrated Clementine’s capabilities with external AI platforms, including Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Early data suggests bigger baskets #
The most commercially interesting signal so far is that AI-assisted grocery orders are averaging larger baskets than typical ones. Instacart’s standard average basket size sits at roughly $113. Orders placed with Clementine’s help are exceeding that figure.
Early engagement data also suggests users are tackling more complex shopping tasks when aided by the assistant. Instead of reordering the same staples, they’re experimenting with new recipes and exploring unfamiliar products.
Part of a broader AI strategy #
Clementine didn’t arrive in a vacuum. In November 2025, the company launched Cart Assistant, a related but distinct AI product designed specifically for retail partners like Sprouts Farmers Market and Kroger. That tool helps retailers customize the shopping experience on their own branded storefronts powered by Instacart’s technology stack.
Instacart plans to expand Clementine’s availability across the rest of the United States and into Canada in the coming months.
The competitive landscape is getting crowded #
Instacart isn’t the only company trying to make grocery shopping conversational. Amazon has been integrating Alexa-powered shopping features for years. Walmart has invested heavily in its own AI shopping tools.
What separates Instacart’s approach is the depth of its grocery-specific training data. General-purpose large language models can tell you how to make risotto. They can’t tell you that the arborio rice at your nearest Publix is out of stock but available at the Kroger two miles away, or that you bought parmesan last week so you probably don’t need more.
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