Instacart Winds Down Caper Smart Carts, Pivots to In-Store Software

Instacart will shut down its Caper Cart business, ending its investment in smart shopping carts as it redirects in-store spending toward software, data and artificial intelligence. The company announced the decision on October 27, 2026, without giving a timeline for the wind-down or details on employees, retailer customers and existing cart deployments.

The reason is adoption. Instacart said retailer uptake of Caper has not grown quickly enough to justify continued investment, after evaluating the business's progress and the resources required to expand it over the past several months. The carts use technology designed to help shoppers navigate stores and scan items as they shop.

Instacart framed the exit as a reallocation, not a retreat. It said retailers and consumer brands are prioritizing technology that can modernize stores at scale, and it plans to concentrate on software and data tools that help grocers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies monitor store conditions, manage inventory and improve merchandising. The company added that Caper provided lessons about developing technology for physical grocery stores, despite slower-than-expected adoption.

What does the pivot leave in Instacart's portfolio?

The remaining in-store stack covers ordering, pricing, shelf visibility and forecasting:

• FoodStorm, an order management system for prepared foods.
• Carrot Tags, software for electronic shelf labels (digital price displays on store shelves).
• In-Store Mode, a digital shopping tool available through the Instacart app and retailers' own apps.
• Store View, a system that uses computer vision (AI-based image analysis) to examine video captured by Instacart shoppers.
• Inventory Intelligence, software providing shelf visibility, merchandising analysis and demand forecasting.
• Store Excellence Portal, which gives CPG companies daily, store-level information about products on shelves.

Instacart said these tools help retailers identify out-of-stock products, understand store conditions and make decisions based on current information. The company recently announced additional software tools designed to give grocers and CPG brands a more detailed view of store shelves.

How does the decision fit the sale process?

The Caper wind-down comes as Instacart looks for a buyer. The company has reportedly discussed selling itself to both Uber and DoorDash while it explores strategic options. Talks with Uber about a sale have since broken off, Bloomberg reported. Instacart has also hired an investment banking company to evaluate its options, according to a report by The Information.

What does this change for grocers and suppliers? For retailers already running Caper carts, the immediate question is continuity: Instacart disclosed no timeline and no arrangements for existing deployments. For CPG brands and grocers, the strategic signal is that Instacart's in-store value proposition now rests on data tools — out-of-stock detection, shelf monitoring and store-level analytics — rather than on hardware placed in aisles.

Instacart described its broader strategy as building a connected system for online and physical grocery operations, allowing retailers and brands to use data from across the platform to manage their businesses. Whether that software-and-data focus proves more durable than the carts will depend on measured retailer uptake, which the company has not disclosed — and on the outcome of a sale process that remains unresolved.