Instacart is building datasets right now on what people purchase. They can simply bypass their physical market place partners of today and become a retailer without the cost of running physical stores. They would only need to take care of fulfillment, and hey, maybe with machine vision there will be a little Instacart robot that delivers your groceries to you direct from the Instacart warehouse: cutting yet another cost and justifying their high valuation. Who know's if that's what they're up to.

> Instacart is building datasets right now on what people purchase.

Why do people say things like this as if Silicon Valley is the only place that's heard of collecting data on customers. You are aware that's what those supermarket savings cards with the barcodes do right?

I guarantee you that Instacart has like the 178th best database of what supermarket customers purchase at best.

Of course, I'm only painting a scenario that I think likely is being posed by Instacart to justify their valuation and future prospect, not the superiority or effieciency thereof.

And there is a big difference between having access to a database of customer sales, and actually having those customers...