Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Economist

Big Y Foods, a family-owned New England supermarket chain, has launched in-store kiosks and online ordering for prepared foods with Instacart (Nasdaq: CART). The service runs on FoodStorm, Instacart's order management technology for prepared foods, and is live at all 79 Big Y stores. Customers can customise made-to-order meals at kiosks, order online for pickup and prepay, or get delivery through the Instacart Marketplace. The menu includes sandwiches, wraps, bowls, pizza, fried seafood and sushi. Catering can be booked days ahead. Inside stores, a central digital workflow manages production across all order types. Big Y says this improves accuracy and gives kitchens better visibility into demand before peak periods. "Prepared foods are an important part of what we offer," said John Fraro, vice president of fresh foods at Big Y.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Instacart, the North American leader in online grocery delivery, today announced it has raised $200 million as part of a new financing round led by existing investors Valiant Peregrine Fund and D1 Capital Partners. The investment comes as consumer demand for Instacart's online grocery delivery and pickup services continues to grow and the company expands its marketplace with new and existing retail partners. Instacart has continued to partner with new retailers over the last year, and today the company partners with more than 500 retailers and delivers from nearly 40,000 store locations across the U.S. and Canada. Today's announcement increases the company's valuation to $17.7 billion. "Today's investment is a testament to the strong conviction our existing investors have in the strength of our teams and the important role Instacart plays for customers, partners, and the entire grocery ecosystem. I'm incredibly proud of our team's work to scale our business this past year and rise to meet...

Santé raises $15 million to expand AI software for wine and spirits retailers. The FINTOP-led round comes six months after a seed raise, with the company saying its platform reaches nearly 1,000 retailers. Wednesday, October 7, 2026 Santé, a fintech and artificial intelligence platform focused on wine and spirits retailers, said Tuesday it has raised $15 million in Series A funding as it expands software that automates inventory, purchasing, marketing and other store operations. The round was led by FINTOP, according to a company announcement distributed through PR Newswire. Returning investors Bonfire Ventures, Operator Collective, Y Combinator and Veridical Ventures also took part. The company said the new financing comes about six months after it announced a $7.6 million seed round. Santé said it has been growing quickly during that period. The company said its business expanded by 500% and now serves nearly 1,000 retailers that together process $2 billion in annual gross merchandise value, or GMV, a common e-commerce measure of sales flowing through a platform. Those figures were disclosed by the company and were not independently verified. The company positions its software as a system built for the specific demands of liquor and wine retail, a market shaped by state-by-state regulation, tax compliance rules and complex inventory management. In its announcement, Santé said store operators also face labor shortages and higher operating costs, pressures that have made day-to-day management harder for independent retailers. According to the company, the platform combines point-of-sale and back-office functions with AI-driven tools that can handle tasks such as receiving inventory, placing orders, managing e-commerce listings, running customer marketing campaigns and setting employee schedules. Santé said it uses data gathered across those functions to power internal AI agents designed to automate work that would otherwise be handled manually by store staff. Among the features highlighted by the company are invoice-scanning tools that read distributor invoices and update inventory levels and unit costs automatically, marketing tools that segment customers based on purchase history, and cataloging tools that generate product descriptions and images for online listings. Santé also said its system connects orders from delivery platforms including DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub and Instacart directly into a retailer's point-of-sale system. The company said its merchandising tools are aimed at reducing the number of slow-moving products on shelves. In the release, Santé said 25% of goods can take more than 12 months to turn a profit and that its software suggests pricing and promotional changes based on store-level sales data. It also said the platform includes liquor-specific functions such as bottle and keg tracking, vintage management and case discount logic. Chief executive Darren Fike said in the announcement that the company began by trying to reduce operational problems for independent wine and liquor retailers and is now shifting toward tools meant to drive revenue more directly. In a statement, he said Santé wants to build systems that help stores re-engage customers and improve margins, not just manage inventory. FINTOP, which led the round, described the company as operating in a large and complicated vertical market where software has often been fragmented. Brittani Roberts, a director at the firm, said in the release that Santé had built practical AI workflows for back-office retail tasks and combined them with embedded financial technology. The funding highlights a broader push to apply automation to highly specialized parts of retail that have not moved as quickly as general merchandise into integrated software systems. Wine and spirits stores often carry large numbers of stock-keeping units, face distributor-driven ordering cycles and must comply with detailed state rules that differ across markets. In that setting, software that reduces manual inventory work or improves purchasing decisions could affect operating costs, stock levels and even how stores manage ties with distributors and delivery platforms. That matters for the beverage sector because independent retailers are a major route to market for wine, beer and spirits brands, especially in states with tightly regulated alcohol sales. If more stores adopt tools that automate reordering, pricing and promotions, suppliers could see changes in how products are selected, how quickly inventory moves and how customer demand is tracked at the store level. Any effect on distributor relationships or shelf allocation would likely vary by state and retailer size, but the technology points to a more data-driven model for specialty beverage retail. The company did not disclose its valuation in the announcement. It also did not provide a detailed breakdown of how the new capital will be spent, beyond saying it will be used to expand what it called the first AI operating system for wine and spirits retail. Santé described its platform as covering in-store operations, e-commerce, subscription sales, delivery app management and marketing in a single system. The company said the goal is to give store owners one platform rather than a collection of separate tools, while using automation to reduce routine tasks such as data entry, catalog maintenance and scheduling. Liked the read? Share it with others!