Instacart Delivers Strong Q4 as AI Speeds Platform Expansion

Instacart’s Q4 may have looked like a straightforward beat-and-raise, but the more consequential storyline for retailers, brands and the payments stack is how the company is using partnerships and AI to push beyond “grocery delivery” into an embedded commerce and retail-tech platform.

“We are also partnering off platform over third-party platforms like OpenAI and Google and Microsoft to be wherever customers want to shop,” CEO Chris Rogers said on the earnings call, adding: “We were the first grocery partner to launch native checkout directly on ChatGPT.”

That “be everywhere” posture is showing up first in partnerships, particularly on the enterprise side, where Instacart is positioning itself as a technology enablement layer for grocers that want true omnichannel capabilities without stitching together point solutions. In the shareholder letter, the company said its marketplace now spans more than 2,200 retail banners and nearly 100,000 locations, while its Storefront technology powers more than 380 grocers’ eCommerce sites.

In Q4, Instacart leaned on that playbook with a steady drumbeat of partner moves: deepening price parity and savings mechanics with grocers (including Hy-Vee and Raley’s shifting to chainwide price parity), adding new marketplace partners like 1-800-Flowers and Lush, and extending its enterprise footprint through integrations like Toast bringing Toast’s retail customers onto Instacart Marketplace and positioning Instacart Business as a procurement partner for Toast’s restaurant customers.

For payments and digital commerce watchers, the “Instant Checkout” integration inside ChatGPT is the most direct signal that Instacart wants its checkout, payment and fulfillment rails to travel with consumers even when shopping starts somewhere else.

AI is the accelerant and also a governance challenge. On the product side, Instacart is framing “agentic” shopping as the next interface layer for grocery, with Rogers noting the company is building a white-label AI assistant (“Cart Assistant”) that it expects to extend to partners such as grocers operating on owned-and-operated surfaces.

The company also described using AI to speed up internal execution. Rogers said average output per engineer rose nearly 40% over the last year, with some teams seeing much larger gains, and that new projects can be delivered multiple times faster than before.

At the same time, a CNBC report highlighted that Instacart halted an AI pricing test after criticism that some shoppers were shown different prices for the same items — a reminder that algorithmic optimization in commerce can create trust and fairness issues quickly, especially in a value-sensitive category like grocery.

Financially, the quarter was strong. Q4 gross transaction value (GTV) rose 14% year over year to $9.852 billion, orders increased 16% to 89.5 million, and revenue grew 12% to $992 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $303 million, up 20%. GAAP net income was $81 million (30 cents per share), which the company attributed in part to higher G&A tied to nonrecurring legal and regulatory matters, including a $60 million FTC settlement.

Looking ahead, Rogers summed up both the confidence and the tempo Instacart is trying to set: “Looking ahead in Q1, we are guiding to the strongest year-over-year GTV growth we have ever provided as a public company.”