Thursday, January 15, 2026
The Kroger Co. has announced an expanded partnership with Google Cloud to scale its generative AI strategy and deliver more personalized digital grocery experiences nationwide. As part of this collaboration, Kroger will adopt Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience (CX) to support its ongoing customer experience transformation and introduce a new AI-powered personal shopping assistant.
With today’s shoppers expecting faster service and highly tailored interactions, grocery retailers face increasing pressure to simplify planning while maintaining personalization. Therefore, Kroger aims to combine advanced AI capabilities with its long-standing food expertise and customer understanding to remove friction from everyday shopping tasks. Through Gemini Enterprise for CX, Kroger will integrate both a Meal assistant and Shopping assistant into its digital platforms, helping customers plan meals, discover products, and complete purchases more efficiently without sacrificing individual preferences.
In addition to customer-facing tools, Kroger will also deploy Customer Experience Agent Studio to analyze phone conversations between customers and store associates. By identifying intent and recurring issues earlier, the company can resolve problems proactively, improve staff productivity, and deliver a more consistent “white-glove” experience across all locations. As a result, Kroger expects to strengthen service quality while reducing operational strain on frontline teams.
Yael Cosset, executive vice president and chief digital officer for Kroger, emphasized how the new tools adapt to everyday routines, stating:
"We know our customers want an experience that is seamless and adapts to the context of their day, and the Shopping assistant is one more way we will transform how our customers will engage with us," and added that customers can rely on the assistant for meal planning, budget-conscious shopping, and faster delivery scheduling while maintaining family preferences.
For nearly 150 years, Kroger has focused on helping families find the foods they love through diverse product choices, private-label offerings, flexible fulfillment options, and personalized promotions. Now, the AI-powered Shopping assistant builds on that foundation by reducing the effort required to complete complex, multi-step shopping tasks. Instead of navigating multiple menus or repeating searches, customers can rely on intelligent automation that handles planning and purchasing from a single request.
The assistant introduces several AI-enabled capabilities. First, intelligent execution allows customers to explore recipes, build large carts for events, reorder favorites, or compare products through one instruction. Next, the inspiration-to-cart flow converts simple requests—such as wanting to cook a specific dish—into guided recipes with ingredients automatically added to the cart. Finally, accurate and grounded recommendations rely on Kroger’s proprietary data and real-time inventory, ensuring that suggestions reflect actual pricing, availability, and relevant local products.
Because the system uses Kroger’s deep knowledge of customer behavior and preferences, it delivers meaningful recommendations that customers can act on immediately. This approach supports the full shopping cycle, from discovering value and planning meals to completing purchases efficiently for every household member.
From Google Cloud’s perspective, the partnership demonstrates how agentic AI can reshape retail experiences. Darshan Kantak, vice president of product for applied AI at Google Cloud, said:
"Kroger is pioneering the future of commerce by embracing true generative and agentic AI at the heart of their customer journey," highlighting that Gemini Enterprise will transform the digital assistant into a comprehensive concierge across all customer touchpoints.
Overall, the expanded collaboration positions Kroger to strengthen digital growth, deepen personalization, and create smoother shopping journeys. By embedding intelligent agents into everyday grocery tasks, Kroger aims to give customers more time for meaningful moments around meals while reinforcing loyalty through consistently helpful digital experiences.
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