Instacart (CART), which goes by the legal name Maplebear, has evolved into a dominant digital grocery marketplace in North America. It connects customers with supermarkets, warehouse clubs, specialty retailers, and even restaurants for same-day delivery or pickup. Today, however, the company is more than just a delivery marketplace. It is now a multi-layered grocery technology platform that has even integrated artificial intelligence (AI) into the shopping experience.
While Instacart is turning into a more diversified and increasingly profitable business model, is the stock a buy, hold, or sell now?
Instacart’s online marketplace connects customers to more than 2,200 retail banners across approximately 100,000 locations. Its enterprise platform is equally strong. With its Storefront Pro offering, Instacart now supports more than 380 grocery e-commerce sites. In the fourth quarter, Instacart experienced its fastest Gross Transaction Value (GTV) growth in three years. GTV, which measures the total dollar value of all orders placed on a platform during a given period, increased 14% year-on-year (YoY) to $9.8 billion. This increase was driven by 89.5 million orders, which rose 16% YoY.
Management expects GTV to be between $10.12 billion and $10.27 billion in the first quarter of 2026, indicating an 11% to 13% YoY increase. Given the ongoing concerns about Amazon (AMZN), DoorDash (DASH), and Uber (UBER) expanding in grocery, this is impressive growth. Customer engagement trends are also showing impressive results, with more than 26 million customers having used Instacart during the year. While frequency among existing users continued to rise, there were new additions as well. This indicates that online grocery is still a relatively untapped industry, and Instacart is profiting from long-term behavioral shifts.
The company’s advertising division is another high-margin growth engine. In Q4, advertising and other revenue increased 10% YoY. During the quarter, more than 9,000 brands advertised on Instacart, an increase from 7,000 during the same period last year. Instacart is also working with Meta Platforms (META), Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL), and The Trade Desk (TTD) to provide off-platform access to its first-party grocery data. These tech companies target high-intent consumers and measure conversion back to actual grocery purchases.
