Instacart was founded in 2012 with a simple mission—to become the Amazon Prime of grocery delivery. In 2021, the company boasts nearly 10 million active users and over 500,000 “shoppers,” Instacart’s term for its delivery drivers. It finally turned in its first profitable month during the COVID-19 pandemic, in April 2020.
The thing is, though, physical grocery stores haven’t disappeared. Instacart is well aware of this, and it’s charting a path into physical retail with the $350 million acquisition of Caper AI, a startup that builds smart cart and cashier-less checkout technology. The acquisition is part of Instacart’s “B2B2C” retail technology strategy that it hopes will allow it to compete with the likes of Amazon, which offers similar innovations.
