AI Goes Grocery Shopping: Instacart’s David McIntosh

With the acquisition of the Caper cart, a technology-enabled shopping cart, grocery-delivery company Instacart began bridging the gap between online and in-person shopping. On today’s episode, David McIntosh, the company’s former chief connected stores officer, joins host Sam Ransbotham to share how physical AI is helping shoppers track their purchases, retailers manage inventory, and product manufacturers stock the right items at the right times. Guest bio: David McIntosh is Instacart’s former chief connected stores officer, where he led the company’s in-store offerings including Caper, an AI-powered smart-cart, enabling retailers to deliver seamless omnichannel retail experiences across online and in-store. Prior to joining Instacart in 2021, McIntosh was the CEO and cofounder of Tenor, a leading GIF and expression search engine integrated into top messengers including WhatsApp, Discord, and iMessage, which Google acquired in 2018. At Google, McIntosh grew Tenor to over one billion users and more than one billion queries per day. McIntosh was previously named Forbes 30 under 30 in consumer technology. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and studied electrical engineering and  computer sciences. Me, Myself, and AI is a podcast produced by MIT Sloan Management Review and hosted by Sam Ransbotham. It is engineered by David Lishansky and produced by Allison Ryder. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.