From its early roots to 2026: the Ocado story

Ocado was founded in the United Kingdom in 2000 as an online grocery business, beginning customer deliveries in 2001.

How Ocado developed

It opened an automated customer-fulfilment centre at Hatfield in 2002 and increasingly developed its own software, robotics and warehouse automation. Ocado listed in London in 2010 and later began licensing its technology to grocery retailers through what became the Ocado Smart Platform.

Ocado in 2026

By 2026, Ocado combined technology partnerships and automation engineering with its continuing involvement in online grocery retail.

Why the history matters

Its history matters because the company turned the difficult economics of grocery fulfilment into an engineering problem, using dense automation, software and robotics to process large numbers of low-margin orders.