Markets / Industries / Retail & E-commerce
Industry view · Retail & E-commerce
Generative AI moved from merchandising copy to the buy button in 2025. AI sources drove a 693% jump in retail-site traffic over the holidays and influenced roughly $262 billion in online sales, while the payment networks raced to certify agent-initiated transactions. The prize is control of the discovery layer; the risk is that retailers become commoditized inventory behind someone else's agent.
01 · The thesis
For two decades the retail moat was the storefront and the search box: own where the shopper starts, own the margin. Generative AI severs that. When a shopper asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Rufus what to buy, the agent — not the retailer — frames the choice set, and AI referrals now convert ~31% better than other traffic while still under 1% of total volume. The interface is moving up a layer, and whoever owns it owns intent.
The second-order effect is disintermediation. 81% of retail executives expect generative AI to weaken brand loyalty by 2027, and a third of brands already report falling upper-funnel search traffic. Retailers face a forced choice: build their own agent (those that did grew sales ~59% faster than peers, per Salesforce) or list their catalog inside someone else's — Etsy, Target and Walmart have done both, joining ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. The winners will be the platforms that sit closest to the moment of intent and the infrastructure that settles the transaction.
Conversational assistants are becoming the front door to commerce, displacing keyword search and SEO-driven discovery.
Real-time, context-aware ranking and styling replace static recommendation engines and merchandising rules.
Purchases complete inside the chat surface via agent-initiated, tokenized payments rather than the retailer's funnel.
Copy, catalog enrichment, pricing, and store automation are generated and managed by embedded assistants.
AI resolves the bulk of routine contacts, but firms are re-adding humans for premium tiers after overcutting.
02 · Public players & exposure
We plot the listed players on two editorial axes — how exposed each is to AI disruption, against how ready its data, brand and position are to be the answer. The figures in the table are sourced; the placement is our read.
| Company | Stance | The sourced fact |
|---|---|---|
| AmazonAMZN | Owns the demand | More than 300 million customers used Rufus in 2025; Amazon credits it with ~$12B in incremental annualized sales and says Rufus users are ~60% more likely to purchase (Amazon / PYMNTS). |
| WalmartWMT | Fast follower | Sparky, launched June 2025, was tried by ~half of Walmart app users; Sparky users show ~35% higher average order value, per Walmart's Q4 FY26 call (PYMNTS / Walmart). |
| ShopifySHOP | Arms the merchants | Sidekick and Agentic Storefronts make Shopify the embedded-AI layer for merchants; embedded-platform agents held an estimated leading share of the agentic-commerce platform market in 2025 (ResearchIntelo). |
| Mercado LibreMELI | LatAm fortress | Q2 2025 revenue rose 34% YoY on $15.3B GMV (up 21%), funding heavy AI investment across its logistics and fintech stack (SEC 8-K, MELI). |
| KlarnaKLAR | AI-first, rebalanced | Its OpenAI assistant did the work of ~853 agents and ~$60M in annual savings by Q3 2025, but Klarna reopened human hiring after cutting too deep (OpenAI / Klarna). |
| SalesforceCRM | Enterprise agents | Agentforce Commerce embeds agentic AI in Commerce Cloud; Salesforce reports retailers running their own agents grew sales ~59% faster than peers (Salesforce). |
| OpenAIpriv | Owns the interface | Launched Instant Checkout Sept 2025 with Etsy, Instacart and Walmart, then sunset it March 2026 after weak uptake (fewer than 30 Shopify merchants), pivoting to discovery (CNBC / Forrester / Modern Retail). |
| VisaV | Settles the rails | Visa Intelligent Commerce offers a single integration for AI-agent payments, with agent-initiated transactions completed in early pilots (Visa / TechInformed). |
| Perplexitypriv | Insurgent agent | Launched Instant Buy with PayPal in Dec 2025, enabling in-chat purchase from merchants including Wayfair and Abercrombie & Fitch (Modern Retail / PayPal). |
| Daydreampriv | Niche disruptor | Raised a $50M seed to launch a generative AI fashion discovery and shopping-agent marketplace, led by ex-Stitch Fix/Sephora exec Julie Bornstein (Fortune / Crunchbase). |
03 · The two clocks
Three timers are running at once: adoption is fast, infrastructure is mid-build, and trust lags both.
Adoption is the fastest clock. Holiday 2025 traffic to US retail sites from generative-AI sources rose 693% year-over-year, and AI-driven revenue per visit was up 254% — a curve that compounds rather than plateaus, even though AI is still under 1% of total retail traffic today.
Infrastructure is mid-build. The networks shipped the plumbing in 2025-26 — Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay (its first non-US transaction ran in the UAE) — while OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol and Google's Universal Commerce Protocol compete to become the standard. Settlement works; the open question is which protocol wins.
Trust is the lagging clock and the real constraint. Bain finds ~50% of consumers are wary of fully autonomous purchases, yet a majority of those who use AI to shop say it makes them more confident. The gap between assisted and autonomous buying is where 2026 will actually be decided.
04 · Private flagships
The companies attacking this industry AI-first, with disclosed funding where available:
Amazon's shopping assistant scaled to 300M+ users in 2025 and is being unified with Alexa+, anchoring Amazon's defense of demand capture.
Turns the Shopify admin into a conversational command center for catalog, automations and insights across millions of stores.
A generative discovery marketplace betting that lower-friction, highly personalized fashion search beats both legacy retail and general chatbots.
Beyond support automation, Klarna's Agentic Product Protocol exposes 100M+ products and 400M+ price points to shopping agents.
In-chat purchasing with PayPal across thousands of merchants, positioning the answer engine as a transactional surface.
A single integration to let trusted AI agents transact, with agent-initiated payments completed in early pilots.
05 · Signals
ChatGPT adds in-chat purchase with Etsy, Instacart and Walmart on the Agentic Commerce Protocol — the first mass-market agentic checkout.
In-chat purchasing rolls out across Wayfair, Abercrombie and thousands of PayPal merchants, opening a second agentic surface.
Salesforce data shows AI touching ~20% of global online orders; Adobe finds AI traffic to retail sites up 693% YoY.
Citing weak uptake (fewer than 30 Shopify merchants), OpenAI pivots from transactions to discovery — a reminder that agentic buying is unproven at scale.
First non-US agent transaction completes in the UAE with Majid Al Futtaim, signaling the rails are productizing globally.
06 · The exposure read
AI rewards clean, structured advantage and punishes friction. The line runs through who owns the data, the brand and the customer — and who is merely a step the technology can route around.
Sources
Adobe — Holiday Shopping Season Drove a Record $257.8B Online with Generative AI · Adobe Blog — AI-driven traffic surges across industries, retail leads · Retail TouchPoints — Holiday Ecommerce Sales Near $260B with AI Driving 20% of Transactions · Mordor Intelligence — Agentic AI in Retail & E-commerce market · PYMNTS — Rufus and Sparky turn Amazon and Walmart into holiday rivals · Fortune — Amazon says Rufus on pace for ~$10B+ in extra sales · OpenAI — Klarna's AI assistant does the work of 700 full-time agents · Klarna — Launches Agentic Product Protocol (100M+ products, 400M+ prices) · CNBC — OpenAI revamps shopping after struggling with Instant Checkout · Modern Retail — Why the AI shopping agent wars will heat up in 2026 · Fortune — Daydream AI fashion shopping agent launches · SEC — MercadoLibre Form 8-K, Q2 FY2025 · Salesforce — Agentforce Commerce announcement · Bain & Company — Agentic AI poised to disrupt retail