Kroger Scales Generative AI Strategy with Google Cloud to Drive Digital Growth and Personalization

Kroger will use Google Cloud new agentic platform, Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, to simplify and transform how customers shop and eat

CINCINNATI and SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) today announced an expanded relationship with Google Cloud. The leading grocery chain will use the Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience (CX) solution to support its customer experience transformation, combining cutting-edge technology with the care, food knowledge and understanding customers expect from Kroger – all into a new personal shopping assistant.

Under the expansion Kroger will roll out Gemini Enterprise for CX nationwide to help make grocery planning easier through an integrated Meal assistant and Shopping assistant –providing faster shopping, without compromising on unique customer preferences. 

In addition to deploying Gemini Enterprise for CX, Kroger will also use Customer Experience Agent Studio to analyze interactions and intent on calls made by customers to stores to proactively identify and resolve issues earlier, enhance associate productivity, and deliver a more seamless, "white-glove" experience nationwide.

"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," said Yael Cosset, executive vice president and chief digital officer for Kroger. "A customer planning a week of dinners, seeking recipe inspiration, or jumping into a new food regimen, will be able to ask our integrated assistant to create a shopping list based on their immediate needs, their budget, and family's unique preferences. We are streamlining every aspect of the shopping experience from building a basket and getting relevant offers and savings, to scheduling a delivery faster than ever before. We are making grocery shopping simpler and more personal, creating more time for real connections around foods families love."

Building a Personal Shopping Companion

Kroger has been helping families find foods they love for nearly 150 years, by removing the need for customers to compromise on the choice of product, including innovative Our Brands products, offering more options to shop how they want in store, through pickup or delivery, and providing personalized offers and value to each customer.

Kroger's Shopping assistant will build upon this foundation, reducing the time it takes to complete complex, multi-step tasks without requiring a lot of input from customers. The Shopping assistant incorporates AI-enabled features such as:

• Intelligent execution: Agentic integration, allowing the assistant to complete complex tasks from a single instruction—such as explore meal ideas, build complex carts for a big occasion, reorder a past purchase, or compare product details.
• Inspiration-to-cart flow: Converts a customer request, like "I want to prepare vegan tomato soup" into a guided recipe, with a detailed ingredient list, that can be added to their shopping carts with a single click.
• Accurate and grounded: Makes recommendations based on Kroger's proprietary data asset and grounded in actual assortment, pricing, and availability, meaning customers receive relevant, reliable suggestions they can act on immediately. The Shopping assistant takes advantage of Kroger's precise understanding of customer needs, and will deliver a complete solution—from finding value, to planning, to purchasing a full meal—that every member of the family will enjoy.

"Kroger is pioneering the future of commerce by embracing true generative and agentic AI at the heart of their customer journey," said Darshan Kantak, vice president of product for applied AI at Google Cloud. "With Gemini Enterprise for Commerce, Kroger will be setting a new standard for grocery, ensuring its agent becomes a comprehensive digital concierge across every customer touchpoint."

About The Kroger Co.

At The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR), we are dedicated to our Purpose: To Feed the Human Spirit™. We are, across our family of companies more than 400,000 associates who serve over 11 million customers daily through an eCommerce shopping experience and retail food stores under a variety of banner names, serving America through food inspiration and uplift, and creating #ZeroHungerZeroWaste communities. To learn more about us, visit our newsroom and investor relations site.

About Google Cloud

Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.

SOURCE The Kroger Co.