The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation into Instacart as the grocery delivery platform faces scrutiny over its artificial intelligence-driven pricing software, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters.

The probe comes amid growing concerns over digital pricing practices, consumer protection, and the broader role of AI in commerce, sending Instacart shares down about 10% in after-hours trading.

The FTC has issued a civil investigative demand to Instacart seeking documents and information related to its Eversight pricing tool, which allows grocery retailers to experiment with prices using AI. Eversight’s algorithmic testing adjusts prices across categories to gauge shopper responsiveness and optimize revenue, a practice that has drawn criticism after a recent study revealed inconsistent pricing across identical items.

The nonprofit-led study, conducted by Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union, tracked 437 shoppers across four U.S. cities. It found that the total cost of the same grocery list at the same store differed by an average of 7% between shoppers, with some users seeing prices as much as 23% higher than others for identical items purchased at the same time.

“The FTC has a longstanding policy of not commenting on potential or ongoing investigations,” the agency said. “But, like so many Americans, we are disturbed by what we have read in the press about Instacart’s alleged pricing practices.”

While the opening of a probe does not imply wrongdoing, it highlights the growing political and regulatory pressure around digital pricing. Rising grocery costs have become a major economic concern in the U.S., shaping state and local elections last November and creating challenges for the Republican Party and President Donald Trump. Regulators are increasingly sensitive to technology-driven practices that may exacerbate affordability issues.

Instacart has defended its pricing practices, emphasizing that Eversight tests are randomized and not based on individual shopper behavior, purchase history, or location. The company also stressed that, except for Target, retailers themselves set prices on the platform. Target prices displayed on Instacart are scraped from publicly available data and marked up to cover costs, according to a Target spokesperson.

Lawmakers have voiced concern about transparency. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote to the FTC, calling for prominent on-screen labels whenever shoppers are included in pricing experiments.

“Consumers deserve to know when they are being placed into pricing tests,” Schumer said.

The Instacart probe is part of a broader crackdown by the FTC under Chair Lina Khan on AI and data-driven pricing tools. Last year, the agency requested information from Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co. regarding software used to analyze consumer data, set prices, or tailor discounts. In January, the FTC staff released a preliminary report warning that some AI pricing tools could leverage individual consumer data to estimate willingness to pay, raising questions about fairness and transparency.

The investigation comes as digital platforms and AI tools increasingly reshape commerce, raising regulatory, ethical, and consumer-protection issues. Instacart now faces the challenge of proving that its AI-driven price experimentation enhances retailer revenue without unfairly disadvantaging consumers already grappling with rising grocery bills.

Analysts believe the outcome of the investigation could have far-reaching implications for other retailers using AI-driven pricing, potentially prompting industry-wide reforms and increased oversight.

When Nigeria’s finance minister appeared before lawmakers this week, the numbers he presented cut sharply through months of official optimism about an economy supposedly turning the corner.

Wale Edun told members of the House of Representatives Committees on Finance and National Planning that the federal government is on course to close 2025 with total revenue of about N10.7 trillion — barely a quarter of the N40.8 trillion projected to fund the N54.9 trillion “budget of restoration.” The admission landed like a fiscal shockwave, exposing a gap so wide that it has reignited accusations that the Tinubu administration is running a government of headlines and talking points rather than hard numbers.

The interactive session was convened to examine the 2026–2028 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, documents already transmitted to the National Assembly by President Bola Tinubu. What lawmakers instead encountered was a stark account of how far reality has drifted from projections in just one fiscal year.

Edun attributed the revenue collapse largely to weak oil and gas inflows, with Petroleum Profit Tax and Company Income Tax from energy firms falling well below expectations. Non-oil revenues, often touted as the backbone of the administration’s reform story, also underperformed across multiple subheads, compounding the pressure on public finances.

To keep the budget afloat, the government borrowed about N14.1 trillion in 2025. Even that, the minister acknowledged, has not been enough to bridge the gap. Combined revenues and borrowings still fall short of what is required to fully fund the budget, forcing what officials describe as “creative” treasury management.

Edun told lawmakers that salaries, statutory transfers to states and local governments, and domestic and external debt service obligations have been met. According to him, this has been achieved through tight cash management and prioritization of essential payments. What this careful phrasing leaves unsaid is that many capital projects and social commitments remain stuck in slow motion.

The Tinubu administration has yet to publish any report on federal incomes and expenses for 2025

The situation has sharpened public frustration with the government’s broader economic narrative. Over the past year, senior officials, including the president himself, have repeatedly said reforms are delivering results, pointing to fuel subsidy removal, exchange rate liberalization, and rising non-oil revenues. Tinubu recently claimed that the 2025 revenue target had already been achieved by August, driven mainly by the non-oil sector, and said the economy had become predictable again.

Yet Edun’s figures suggest something very different. If the government is ending the year at N10.7 trillion, questions arise about how revenue targets were measured, communicated, and celebrated. This contradiction has fueled claims that the administration is more focused on selling a reform success story than confronting its fiscal reality.

The credibility gap has also put the National Assembly under scrutiny. Lawmakers routinely approve ambitious budgets and medium-term frameworks built on optimistic oil production and price assumptions, only to watch implementation unravel. Many analysts and civic groups now describe the legislature as a rubber stamp, unwilling or unable to hold the executive to account for repeated revenue failures and ballooning deficits.

That perception is reinforced by the latest disclosure that parts of the 2024 budget are being carried over into 2026. For a country struggling with infrastructure decay, unemployment, and rising poverty, the idea that a budget is still being implemented two years later has become a symbol of dysfunction. It signals not only weak execution but also a disconnect between planning cycles and economic reality.

On capital spending, Edun said releases to ministries, departments, and agencies in 2024 reached N5.2 trillion out of a N7.1 trillion allocation, a performance rate of about 73 percent. When multilateral and bilateral-funded projects were included, total capital expenditure rose to N11.1 trillion out of N13.7 trillion. While the figures suggest some progress, they also underline how dependent capital delivery has become on external funding rather than domestic revenue strength.

The minister warned lawmakers against tying spending rigidly to oil income, arguing that optimistic projections have repeatedly undermined budgets. He urged a shift toward spending based on actual inflows rather than expectations, an admission that the administration’s budgeting culture remains aspirational rather than empirical.

Budget and National Planning Minister Atiku Bagudu echoed that concern, describing internal debates within the Economic Management Team over revenue assumptions. He said officials were torn between conservative projections grounded in history and ambitious targets designed to force revenue agencies to perform better. For the N54 trillion 2026 budget, oil production is still pegged at 2.06 million barrels per day, but revenue calculations will be based on a lower assumption of 1.84 million barrels per day in an effort to reduce forecast errors.

Lawmakers, for their part, acknowledged the fragility of the economy. House Finance Committee chairman James Faleke said inflated budgets detached from economic realities only deepen Nigeria’s fiscal troubles and promised closer scrutiny of the MTEF and FSP.

All of this sits uneasily alongside the administration’s reform narrative. Edun has said the removal of fuel subsidies and the move to a market-based exchange rate saved the government about $20 billion, roughly five per cent of GDP, money that could now be redirected to infrastructure, health, and education. He described the last 18 months as a painful gestation period with gains beginning to show.

The problem is that those gains are difficult to reconcile with a revenue shortfall of nearly N30 trillion in a single year. For many Nigerians, the lived reality remains one of higher prices, weaker purchasing power, and delayed public projects. In that context, claims of stabilization and restored confidence ring hollow.

As Tinubu prepares to present the 2026 budget to the National Assembly on Friday, concerns remain whether it is going to be different from the 2024 and 2025 budgets, or an addition to the over-bloated annual budgets that will require years to be fully implemented.

Nigeria’s House of Representatives has approved a major revision to the Electoral Act that would make the real-time electronic transmission of polling unit results compulsory, a response to widespread public demand for greater transparency following the controversial 2023 general elections.

The provision was adopted on Wednesday during clause-by-clause consideration of amendments to the Electoral Act 2022. Under the newly approved wording, the presiding officer at each polling unit must electronically transmit results to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Results Viewing Portal (IReV) in real time after completing, signing, and stamping the prescribed result form (EC8A). Where available, the form must also be countersigned by candidates’ agents before the upload.

Until now, the law did not explicitly require INEC to transmit results as they are recorded, and reliance on technology remained largely discretionary. During the last general election, INEC had promised that real-time uploads would occur — a pledge central to efforts to boost confidence in the electoral process. However, the IReV portal stalled for extended periods after polls closed in several areas, leaving many Nigerians unable to see results as they were announced at polling units, and feeding public suspicion about the integrity of the process.

Advocates of the amendment have applauded the House’s adoption of real-time transmission as a legal requirement, saying it aligns the letter of the law with voters’ expectations for accountability and transparency. Civil society organizations had repeatedly called on the National Assembly to make electronic result transmission mandatory after the uneven performance of IReV and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in 2023 undermined public confidence.

Beyond real-time uploads, the House also approved a clause introducing a five-year jail term for presiding officers found guilty of declaring false results — a stringent measure aimed at deterring manipulation at the polling unit level. Another amendment elevates the BVAS or any other prescribed technological device as the primary tool for accrediting voters, replacing manual methods. If the BVAS or another device fails at a polling unit and no replacement is available, the election in that unit must be cancelled and rescheduled within 24 hours if INEC determines the unit’s result could substantially affect the overall outcome.

Concerns About Circumvention and Political Sabotage

While the changes have been welcomed as steps toward a more credible electoral framework, there are lingering concerns that politicians who have historically relied on malpractice and rigging may still find ways to circumvent the rules. The 2023 general elections are the most recent and widely cited example.

INEC had repeatedly assured Nigerians that BVAS and the IReV portal would enable real-time transmission of results nationwide during the presidential and National Assembly elections. That assurance helped generate optimism that technology could help curb longstanding electoral fraud.

But when voting ended on February 25, 2023, the portal did not immediately show results from many polling units. Technical challenges related to scaling up IReV for a nationwide election forced INEC to suspend uploads temporarily, even as results continued to be manually collated and announced at polling units. It was not until later that evening — in some cases hours after polls closed — that the first results began appearing on the portal.

Observers said the delay undermined confidence in the results management process. Some civil society groups and political actors questioned why the system did not perform as expected. International monitoring reports noted that while BVAS and IReV were innovative in theory, their performance under the enormous operational load of a general election was mixed, with many scanned results failing to upload promptly due to connectivity and infrastructure issues.

Opposition figures and commentators also raised allegations — disputed by INEC — that the absence of real-time uploads created openings for manipulation or strategic delays at critical moments, especially in closely contested states. Such assertions compounded public skepticism toward the technology and the broader electoral process.

However, the House’s decision marks a clear attempt to lock technological transparency into law rather than leave it to administrative discretion. Lawmakers appear intent on closing the gap between INEC’s deployment of tech tools and legal obligations, and on strengthening accountability through penalties for misconduct.

Yet the experience of 2023 underscores that mandates alone may not be enough. Experts note that real-time transmission depends not only on legal requirements but also on reliable infrastructure, training of election officials, adequate network connectivity across urban and rural areas, and robust safeguards against manipulation. INEC itself has acknowledged persistent network and infrastructure challenges as obstacles to seamless result uploads.