OpenAI and Instacart introduced a grocery shopping experience within ChatGPT, enabling customers to generate meal ideas, create grocery lists, and complete purchases without exiting the chat interface.
This initiative builds on an existing collaboration between the two companies. More than two years ago, Instacart launched an in-app AI search tool, powered by ChatGPT, that assists shoppers with meal preparation inquiries and dietary restrictions.
The relationship between OpenAI and Instacart has intensified since former Instacart CEO Fidji Simo, an OpenAI board member, became CEO of Applications at the company in May.
OpenAI prioritizes agentic commerce, which involves AI tools conducting shopping research and making purchases for users. Its most recent developer event highlighted plans to integrate applications into ChatGPT. During an early developer preview, ChatGPT launched integrations with Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, and Zillow. OpenAI has since announced additional partnerships with Target, Intuit, and other companies.
Prior to this year’s holiday shopping season, OpenAI and Perplexity announced in-app features designed to assist users with product purchasing decisions. Users can, for instance, ask ChatGPT to identify optimal deals for specific gaming laptop criteria. Adobe projected a 520% increase in AI-assisted online shopping during the current holiday season.
Despite ChatGPT’s widespread adoption, OpenAI is not currently profitable and may remain so for several years. The resource-intensive nature of its products means that subscription revenues do not cover the computational power required to operate them. Agentic commerce tools could offer OpenAI an alternative revenue stream, as it will collect an undisclosed “small fee” on merchant sales facilitated through the platform. However, the volume of ChatGPT-based shopping required for these fees to significantly impact OpenAI’s financial position remains substantial.
