Samsung's smart fridges can now order their own groceries

For years, the running joke about smart home tech was the mythical fridge that would magically order milk before you even realized you were out. Well, that punchline is finally turning into a real product.

Samsung just teamed up with Instacart to bring automated grocery replenishment to its 2025 Bespoke smart refrigerators. Through Samsung's built-in AI Vision Inside camera system and Instacart's developer platform, the fridge will be able to spot empty shelves and reorder supplies for same-day delivery from local grocery stores.

Smarter cameras meet grocery APIs

The integration relies on Samsung’s proprietary AI Vision Inside tech to recognize food items inside the fridge.

From there, it taps into Instacart’s product-matching API to map those items to real store shelves. Orders are then routed through Instacart's grocery network, so consumers can restock without touching their phones.

On the hardware side, this will ship on 2025 Bespoke models equipped with either the 32-inch AI Family Hub screen or the smaller 9-inch AI Home display. Existing owners aren't being left behind either: Samsung plans to push the Instacart feature to current AI Family Hub+ units via over-the-air firmware updates later in 2025.

Why it matters

We think Samsung made the right call by avoiding the trap of building its own grocery ecosystem. Instead of trying to reinvent retail logistics, plugging into Instacart’s battle-tested fulfillment network is the only realistic way to make this work.

For consumers, it sounds like the ultimate convenience if you already rely on weekly grocery runs. But in practice, we suspect human verification will still be required before orders actually go through. AI vision can easily misidentify similar carton designs, misjudge leftovers in tupperware, or trigger duplicate purchases for items you didn't actually want to replenish immediately.

For the broader appliance market, this shifts the battleground from useless novelty screens to actual commerce hubs. The smart kitchen has spent a decade looking for a real identity beyond playing Spotify while you cook, and turning the fridge into a passive shopping cart might finally be the use case that sticks.