What the business is
Ocado sells online-grocery automation technology to clients such as Kroger in 14 US states, Sobeys, Morrisons and others.
The bet
On-Grid Robotic Pick arms driven by AI models can pack most groceries and cut fulfilment costs, so Ocado's clients need fewer packers.
How it started
The Verge saw an early OGRP prototype at an Ocado site in 2018. Back then, a bag of oranges stumped the robot.
What happened
In 2024 OGRP packed over 30 million items with fewer than 100 arms installed. Matthews says AI models learned to lift bags of fruit by the label. Ocado plans new gripper attachments, including a parallel gripper and a soft hand-like one, and a wine-bottle attachment; watermelons stay with humans.
What has to be true
Online grocery orders have tight margins because stores bear picking, packing and shipping costs
Ocado's Grid already moved crates automatically, so packing was the main manual step left
Advances in the AI models inside the arms moved them from a development project to working infrastructure
Jobs like packing frozen food are hard to staff, so they are natural candidates to automate
What can be applied
Automation became viable when the AI inside the arms improved, not the hardware; at 90% reliability the cost of unjamming machines still beats manual work, says Matthews.
Aftermath
As of 10 August 2025 Ocado was scaling OGRP across sites and developing lighter 3D-printed robots that weigh a third of the originals. The Verge corrected an earlier error: the arms packed over 30 million items, not orders, in 2024.
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