OpenAI partners with Instacart to introduce a groundbreaking grocery shopping experience within the ChatGPT platform, allowing users to effortlessly brainstorm meal ideas, compile grocery lists, and complete purchases—all from the chat interface. This innovative feature expands on the two-year-long collaboration between the two companies, which initially launched an AI search tool within the Instacart app, enabling customers to ask questions about meal preparation and dietary preferences.
The partnership has deepened following the appointment of Fidji Simo, former Instacart CEO and current board member of OpenAI, as the CEO of Applications at OpenAI in May. This development reflects a growing trend in “agentic commerce,” where AI tools assist users in conducting shopping research and making purchases on their behalf. OpenAI has earmarked this area as a priority, with its recent developer day showcasing plans to enhance ChatGPT with various app integrations.
In an initial rollout, ChatGPT has already partnered with platforms such as Booking.com, Canva, and Spotify, with further collaborations announced with major retailers like Target and Intuit. As the holiday shopping season approaches, both OpenAI and Perplexity have unveiled features that assist users in product selection, emphasizing AI’s role in optimizing shopping decisions.
Despite ChatGPT’s surge in popularity, OpenAI continues to face financial challenges, with profitability still a distant goal. The resource-intensive nature of its services means that subscription revenues fall short of offsetting operational costs. These new shopping functionalities could provide an additional revenue stream, as OpenAI will collect a small, undisclosed fee from merchants for successful transactions initiated through the platform. However, significant user engagement will be necessary for these fees to substantially impact OpenAI’s financials.
