Instacart acquires Caper AI, a smart cart and instant checkout startup, for $350M, as it moves deeper into physical retail tech
Instacart made its name by providing a way for consumers to bypass shopping in stores in person, by ordering items online and getting them delivered to their homes — a business that positively boomed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. But with physical stores still looming large in the world of groceries, Instacart is also wants to play a role there, too. Today, the company announced that it is acquiring Caper AI, a startup that builds smart cart and cashier-less checkout technology that uses computer vision and other techniques to detect items and ring them up for shoppers.
The acquisition is part of Instacart’s expanding “B2B2C” retail technology strategy. Alongside its mainstay online ordering and grocery delivery service, the company — as of March this year valued at $39 billion — is building out a stack of products and services for stores that they in turn can use to provide new services to their customers. It follows just weeks after Instacart acquired FoodStorm to help stores take and manage catering-style larger orders of ready-made food.
Instacart’s CEO Fidji Simo (who joined earlier this year from Facebook), said in an interview with TechCrunch this week that this acquisition is in keeping with what retailers themselves want and need to do.
