By Adam Clark

Shares of Instacart-parent Maplebear were diving Thursday following a report that the Federal Trade Commission is probing the grocery-delivery company.

The FTC has sent Instacart a civil investigative demand as it looks for information about the company's Eversight pricing tool, which allows retailers on its platform to experiment with different prices using artificial intelligence, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Maplebear shares were down 6% in premarket trading.

Instacart and the FTC didn't immediately respond to requests for comment early Thursday. The FTC told Reuters that it doesn't comment on potential or ongoing investigations but the agency was "disturbed by what we have read in the press about Instacart's alleged pricing practices."

As Barron's recently wrote, prices being set by AI are becoming more prevalent. Instacart recently charged up to 23% more to different consumers for the same grocery items at the same store, according to an investigation by Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative.

In a previous blog post, Instacart said a very small group of retailers use Eversight, "to run limited online pricing tests." Prices never change in real time and the tests "never use personal, demographic, or user-level behavioral data," the post added.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com

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December 18, 2025 06:40 ET (11:40 GMT)

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