Caper builds AI-powered smart shopping carts that turn brick-and-mortar grocery stores into frictionless checkout environments without the heavy infrastructure costs of Amazon Go-style ceiling camera systems. Founded in 2016 by Lindon Gao and Ahmed Beshry and incubated in Y Combinator's W16 batch, Caper set out to solve the universal supermarket pain of long checkout lines while preserving the existing store layout. Rather than rebuilding stores from scratch, Caper bolted intelligence directly onto the shopping cart.
The Caper Cart uses onboard cameras, scales, scanners, and deep learning models to automatically identify products as they are placed in the basket, calculate weights for produce, surface targeted promotions on a built-in touchscreen, and process payment without a cashier. Shoppers can also navigate stores with the cart guiding them to items on their shopping list. The Caper Counter is a smaller self-checkout kiosk for convenience stores.
Caper raised about $13M across seed and Series A rounds from Lux Capital, First Round Capital, and Y Combinator. In October 2021, Instacart acquired Caper for approximately $350M to power its Connected Stores division, complementing its grocery delivery business. Caper Carts are now deployed at Kroger, Wakefern, Schnucks, ALDI, and Coborn's, among other major grocers across North America and Europe.