Albertsons is expanding its OpenAI partnership with a Safeway ChatGPT shopping experience and broader AI tools for retail teams and customers.
Albertsons Companies said on October 1, 2026, that it is expanding its work with OpenAI, including a Safeway grocery-shopping experience inside ChatGPT. Customers can start with a recipe, a photo, a digital shopping list or a plain-language request. ChatGPT can then surface products and savings, help assemble a cart and direct the shopper to Safeway to complete checkout.
The launch adds a customer-facing route to capabilities Albertsons says it is developing across its retail business. The company describes using ChatGPT Enterprise and other OpenAI-powered applications with selected teams, including groups building retail technology and business functions. It says these teams are testing ways to streamline work and assess which practices can be repeated more broadly; the announcement does not quantify time savings or describe a company-wide rollout.
Albertsons also says it combines predictive models with generative AI to produce data-driven recommendations and promotional insights for merchants. For shoppers, the company’s stated areas of exploration include help with building baskets, reordering familiar products and planning meals around preferences and information a customer provides. The announcement does not detail the underlying models, disclose a measurement of recommendation accuracy or set out specific commercial results.
The Safeway experience is planned to expand beyond that banner to Albertsons, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, ACME and Tom Thumb. OpenAI’s post places the work across a retail network of more than 2,200 stores serving over 36 million customers each week. It presents the ChatGPT shopping feature as one part of a broader partnership spanning employee tools, customer applications and retail decision support.
The immediate customer journey still sends shoppers to Safeway to check out, while product discovery and cart-building begin in ChatGPT. Albertsons describes the feature as an extension of its AI shopping assistant and Ask AI capabilities, with additional grocery brands identified as planned—not yet confirmed—as future additions.