OpenAI and Instacart are launching a grocery shopping experience inside ChatGPT, allowing users to brainstorm meal ideas, create grocery lists, and complete purchases directly in the chat interface. The feature builds on Instacart’s prior AI-powered recipe and dietary guidance tools, first introduced more than two years ago.
The partnership between the companies has strengthened since former Instacart CEO Fidji Simo joined OpenAI as CEO of Applications in May, while already serving on the board. OpenAI is increasingly focused on agentic commerce, a model where AI tools research products and complete purchases on behalf of users. This aligns with its broader strategy to integrate apps into ChatGPT, which has included early previews of Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Spotify, and Zillow, followed by new partnerships with Target and Intuit.
Ahead of the holiday season, OpenAI and Perplexity introduced AI shopping assistants that help users find and compare products through chat queries. Analysts note that niche startups may still outperform general-purpose AI in specific product categories. While ChatGPT is not yet profitable, transaction fees from these tools could generate a new revenue stream if usage scales significantly.
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