Company Overview

Company Description

Instacart is powering the future of grocery through technology. We partner with retailers to help them successfully navigate the digital transformation of their businesses.

Instacart was founded in 2012 to bring the grocery industry online and help make grocery shopping effortless. We started by understanding what consumers want and then built enterprise-grade technologies that allow retailers to meet those needs. We want to enable any retailer, large or small, to drive success both online and in-store and serve their customers better in all of the ways they choose to shop. Today, more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners(1) that collectively represent more than 85% of the U.S. grocery market partner with Instacart(2). We have demonstrated our ability to help our retail partners drive strong growth and stay competitive in a complex and increasingly digital industry. Our GTV, representing the online sales we power for all of our retail partners, grew at a compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, of 80% between 2018 and 2022, compared to 50% for the overall online grocery market and 1% for offline grocery(3). In 2022, we generated approximately $29 billion of GTV, which makes Instacart the leading grocery technology company in North America(4).

Instacart invented a new model for online grocery shopping by offering consumers on-demand delivery from the stores they know and trust. We help our retail partners reach 7.7 million monthly active orderers who spend approximately $317 per month on average on Instacart(5). Retailers reach customers through both Instacart Marketplace, where customers can shop from their favorite retailers through our app or website, and retailers’ owned and operated online storefronts that are powered by Instacart Enterprise Platform, our end-to-end technology solution encompassing eCommerce, fulfillment, Connected Stores, ads and marketing, and insights.

When shopping for groceries, consumers want selection, quality, value, and convenience, and they shop in many different ways. Instacart started as a way for households to conveniently manage their weekly grocery shopping, a recurring and high order value consumer use case. Today, customers can place orders for delivery or pickup across a variety of use cases including the weekly shop, bulk stock-up, convenience, and special occasions. Customers can select the fulfillment option and speed that best serve their needs. For example, a busy parent may prefer the reliability of having their family’s groceries delivered every Sunday, but if they need a few items in the middle of the week, they can trust Instacart to help deliver the items they need with priority delivery (as fast as 30 minutes). Each order can be shopped for and delivered with care by one of the hundreds of thousands of shoppers who value the flexible earnings opportunities that Instacart provides(6).

As consumers and retailers move online, CPG brands can use Instacart Ads as a new way to reach customers at the point of purchase and within minutes of delivery and consumption. Today, over 5,500 brands are using Instacart Ads and are now more easily discoverable as customers fill their digital carts(7). Instacart Ads offers brands a highly measurable ads offering that leverages first-party transaction data to move products off of store shelves more efficiently.

Instacart Technology

Grocery retailers have earned the trust and loyalty of customers over generations by offering selection, quality, value, and convenience. For more than a decade, we have invested in technology that is custom-built for online grocery. We believe our scaled marketplace provides us with unique insights into the needs of the online grocery consumer. Our strategy is to put our technology capabilities and consumer insights into the hands of our retail partners. We are investing more in technology custom-built for online grocery than any single grocer could on their own, allowing grocers to leverage our scale and investments to grow their businesses.

Our technology solutions are better together. Since our founding, Instacart Marketplace has powered more than $100 billion of GTV and over 900 million orders with approximately 20 billion items ordered(8). This scale gives us unique insights into consumer buying behavior, needs, and trends across the entire grocery industry in North America. We then utilize these insights to enhance Instacart Enterprise Platform, ensuring retailers can best meet their customers’ needs across their owned and operated online and physical storefronts. Similarly, Instacart Enterprise Platform enhances Instacart Marketplace, as our deep integration with retailers allows us to expand marketplace capabilities for our customers. As we continue to scale and refine our technology and data insights across Instacart Marketplace and Instacart Enterprise Platform, our algorithms continuously improve to provide significant benefits, including better search results and recommendations, more intelligent replacements, and more seamless checkout flows, among others. Many of these benefits also enhance the value delivered to our brand partners — for example, in the second quarter of 2023, we helped customers discover over 180 million items through recommendations. This draws more brands to Instacart Ads, which yields benefits for Instacart Marketplace and Instacart Enterprise Platform.

• Instacart Marketplace. Connects customers to their favorite national, regional, and local retailers on the largest online grocery marketplace in North America through our mobile app or website(9).

• Instacart Enterprise Platform. Provides retailers with a suite of enterprise-grade technologies that span eCommerce, fulfillment, Connected Stores, ads and marketing, and insights.

• Instacart Ads. Allows CPG brands to drive sales by engaging with customers who are actively shopping for products on Instacart, whom we refer to as high-intent customers, in a highly measurable and targeted way while also providing savings and product discovery to customers through our leading digital advertising solutions and insights.

Instacart is built for the entire grocery ecosystem, improving the experiences for each of our constituents and helping them succeed:

• Retailers. We enable more than 1,400 retail banners to grow by providing technology that can accelerate the digital transformation of their entire business(10). Our retail partners include national leaders such as Aldi, Costco, and Kroger, regional favorites such as Publix and Wegmans, local mainstays like Mollie Stone’s Markets, and retailers serving many specific use cases, such as Best Buy, Lowe’s, Sephora, and Walgreens. We estimate that the sales volume we power for our top 20 retail partners represented 5.0% of their total sales in 2022, up from 0.6% in 2018(11).

• Customers. We help 7.7 million monthly active orderers(12) shop at their favorite retailers and enjoy selection, quality, value, and convenience. We reach over 95% of households in North America(13). Our membership program, Instacart+, offers expanded customer benefits to our 5.1 million members(14), including unlimited free delivery on orders over a certain size, a reduced service fee, credit back on eligible pickup orders, and exclusive benefits.

• Brands. We represent one of the largest and fastest growing eCommerce channels for CPG brands. We provide discovery and attractive return on investment, or ROI, for over 5,500 brands through our industry-leading advertising tools and insights purpose-built for the online grocery category(15). We estimate that on average, our ads deliver more than a 15% incremental sales lift, and in some cases twice that, for our brand partners(16). Our brand partners include household brands such as Campbell’s, Nestlé, and Pepsi and emerging brands such as Banza, Chloe’s Fruit Pops, and Whisps.

• Shoppers. We offer approximately 600,000 shoppers an immediate, flexible earnings opportunity that allows them to choose when and how much to work(17). Because the most important part of the job is picking the right products for customers, Instacart tends to attract people who use empathy, efficiency, communication, and problem-solving to pick, pack, and deliver an order. Shoppers are deeply valued members of the Instacart community, and we strive to make the shopping experience as seamless as possible and protect shoppers while they work.

(1) As of June 30, 2023.

(2) Based on total grocery sales in 2022, excluding alcohol sales. CSG.

(3) Incisiv.

(4) Based on total online grocery sales in 2022.

(5) For the month ended June 30, 2023.

(6) As of June 30, 2023.

(7) Active brand partners as of June 30, 2023.

(8) As of July 31, 2023.

(9) Based on GTV generated on Instacart and total grocery sales in 2022.

(10) As of June 30, 2023.

(11) Based on total grocery sales in 2022, excluding alcohol sales. CSG.

(12) For the month ended June 30, 2023. The number of monthly active orderers may overstate the number of unique individuals, as one customer may register for, and use, multiple accounts. Fluctuations in the number of monthly active orderers are not necessarily indicative of changes in our financial performance.

(13) U.S. Census Bureau (July 2021) and Statistics Canada (2021). Based on number of households in Instacart’s active delivery-enabled or pickup zones as of June 30, 2023.

(14) As of June 30, 2023. Includes paying Instacart+ members only and excludes free trial members.

(15) Active brand partners as of June 30, 2023.

(16) Based on internal tests run across all brand partners using our Sponsored Product ads offering in the quarter ended June 30, 2023 and individual tests run for select brands or types of brands.

(17) Based on shoppers who completed at least one order during the month ended June 30, 2023.

We were incorporated as Maplebear Inc. in Delaware in 2012, and we do business as Instacart. Our co-founders are Apoorva Mehta, Max Mullen, and Brandon Leonardo. Our principal executive offices are located at 50 Beale Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, California 94105. Our telephone number is (888) 246-7822. Our website address is www.instacart.com/company.