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The future of commerce is agentic, and building that future requires deep industry collaboration. Today, we’re reaching a major milestone: the Universal Commerce Protocol Tech Council is expanding. Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce and Stripe join founding members including Google, Shopify, Etsy, Target and Wayfair to continue developing the building blocks of agentic commerce. Each new partner brings deep expertis…

Introducing the Universal Commerce Protocol for AI Agents by Google 🔥 UCP lets AI agents discover products, fill carts, and complete purchases autonomously. And it's 100% Open Source. Here's the problem with AI shopping today: User: "Find me a lightweight suitcase under $200" Agent: "Here are some options..." *links to 12 different websites* Now you're opening tabs. Comparing prices manually. Re-entering your paymen…

What an incredible first day at #NRF2026! I’m already so energized by the conversations I’ve had with leaders across the industry. It’s clear that the future of retail is being written right now, and we’re thrilled to be moving the industry one step closer to the agentic commerce era. We’re also honored to stand alongside industry leaders like Shopify, Target, Wayfair, Etsy and Walmart to launch the Universal Commerc…

Anthropic launches AI commerce agents with Visa, Mastercard and Accenture #Anthropic has introduced a commerce agent blueprint that allows retailers to build shopping and merchant agents on #Claude, in partnership with #Visa, #Mastercard and #Accenture. Using the code plugin, retailers can create agents that search product catalogs, remember customer preferences, build carts and answer questions. Merchant agents can …

🚨 BREAKING🚨: Amazon is staffing up for a serious push into Agentic Commerce, with a new job listing for a Principal TPM to lead 40 engineers on "Amazon's strategic integration with third-party agentic platforms." 🛒 The role will build "on-site and off-site commerce experiences", suggesting Amazon's catalogue could soon be available in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. 🤝 This follows Amazon joining the Universal Commer…

Today is a big day in Agentic Commerce. Millions of SKUs from Walmart and Shopify are now showing up for instant purchase in ChatGPT searches. It’s going to be interesting to see how it all plays out, but as Rishad Tobaccowala says, “The future doesn’t fit in the containers of the past.” Scot Wingo Juozas Kaziukėnas

Twenty years ago, I was part of a team that reinvented search for commerce. Back then, we trained shoppers to strip away natural language and type in as few keywords as possible. Today, we're building something completely different. I'm proud to announce that Agentic Commerce Search is now generally available — and it's one of the most exciting things I've worked on in my career. Here's the problem we set out to solv…

Walmart + OpenAI just made the AI commerce race very real. Walmart announced today it's bringing its full product catalog into ChatGPT's Instant Checkout. Customers can now shop 400,000+ items through conversation, not search bars. As retailers and tech providers lay the foundation for the future of shopping, agentic commerce is already consolidating around four key players: OpenAI, Perplexity, Google, and Shopify. T…

I had the pleasure to be invited by the Akeneo team to share my thoughts on agentic commerce and how Shopify is enabling its customers in this new era of commerce. Lots of great conversation, including my "top 5 things" that brands need to be doing right now to win in this day and age: 1️⃣ Structured, complete product data Agents need attributes, dimensions, variants — machine-readable, not marketing copy. 2️⃣ Real-t…

We’ve been building in stealth for over a year. Today, I can finally share a glimpse into Veliu, the agentic commerce lab developing frontier technologies for businesses and consumers. It all started with an agentic marketplace in 2025 (still in Beta), when many people hadn’t even heard of AI search or agentic commerce. Within a few months, tens of thousands of people had already delegated over $100M in buying and se…

Amazon and Shopify just told AI agents: not here. Buried in 𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀.𝘁𝘅𝘁 was a new rule: Google's AI shopping agent blocked. A few other AI tools blocked too. Two days later, Shopify followed with its own line in the sand: “No automated ‘buy-for-me’ agents without human review.” To most people, these are just technical changes. But to anyone watching the agentic commerce race, they are a plot twist. Amazon doe…

Google just shipped something most e-commerce founders haven't even Googled yet. And it's going to quietly bankrupt the brands ignoring it. It's called UCP - Universal Commerce Protocol. Google, Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, Walmart, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and Adyen all agreed on a single universal language so AI agents can browse your store, check inventory, build a cart, and complete a purchase without a human…

Stop hacking llm.txt files! The future of Agentic Commerce is already in your Shopify admin. Kendra Page and I are flying back from the Shopify Dev event in NYC. My head is still spinning after chatting with Eytan Seidman, Darius Gai, and Liam Griffin. We talked about everything from huge advancements from Shopify Flow to the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). But the biggest unlock for me was the strategy around "Ag…

Dude OpenAI just screwed over Shopify as a partner. Shopify built an entire roadmap around agentic commerce and folks being able to buy through ChatGPT. It's been a core part of their selling point for months. Yesterday they pulled the rug out. From what I can tell they did this *without telling* Shopify. I wonder if they think messing up their partner's roadmaps will earn them trust with the broader eCommerce ecosys…

The UCP bazaar is now searchable, scriptable, and skill-ready. 😎 Millions of Shopify merchants natively speak UCP. Billions of products are discoverable through Global Catalog. New UCP CLI teaches your agent how to speak Universal Commerce Protocol and navigate commerce. > $ npm install -g @shopify/ucp-cli > $ ucp skills add It's a step-function upgrade for agentic commerce. Full breakdown ↓

OpenAI didn't kill agentic commerce. It killed its own checkout infrastructure. Everyone panicked when OpenAI pivoted away from owning the full commerce stack. But zoom out and the picture looks very different. In 2025, OpenAI tried to own everything: PayPal direct checkout, merchant relationships, the full vertical. By March 2026, they flipped the model entirely. Now it's distribution-first. Shopify handles agentic …

This Google launch killed traditional eCommerce ⬇️ Here's what happened & how you can capitalize (FAST): Yesterday, Google rolled out Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). What is it? It is an open standard that lets AI agents complete purchases across Search, Gemini, and every major shopping platform. Here's what's live: 1. 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐈 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞 Shoppers buy from Search results using Google P…

Is Anthropic running the better commerce strategy? Both Anthropic and OpenAI have been very active in commerce this year, and they go about it in very different ways. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰 𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱 Anthropic released Claude Commerce Agents, an open-source blueprint with two reference agents: • Shopping agent: Runs directly on the retailer's own site. • Merchant agent: Helps store teams with sales, inven…

The early data on agentic commerce is becoming very clear. Our growth team analyzed Shopify storefront data and the numbers tell a compelling story: 1. AI-referred sessions convert at nearly 50% higher rates than organic search 2. Average order values are 14% higher 3. More than half of AI-referred sessions start on product pages vs 20% for organic: the research phase is happening inside the AI conversation The patte…

Shopify just launched an agent readiness tool where you can put in any store URL and see how ready it is for AI shopping agents like ChatGPT and Copilot. I ran it on Gymshark - Sports Fashion and they scored 84% AI ready, 13 steps passed - a few gaps. Gymshark obviously has reviews and ratings on their product pages, but they are not defined as structured markup in JSON-LD format, which is how agents actually read th…

Two days ago, OpenAI clarified the transaction fee it will charge Shopify merchants with its Instant Checkout product: 4%. This reinforces my argument that (independent) agentic commerce is a mirage: many Shopify merchants run on incredibly thin margins (3-8% net) and simply may not be able to support this. Further, they aren't in control of it: if ChatGPT's Instant Checkout affiliate link system overwhelms or front-…

What a time to be in retail! Leaving New York after what was without a doubt the best National Retail Federation Big Show yet! It’s difficult to summarize all of the incredible innovation on the show floor, industry-defining announcements, keynote takeaways and client conversations, but a few quick reflections in the world of #AgenticCommerce … 📒 The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is live. Commerce will never be …

We are living in the most interesting moment in ecommerce history! To share the love (as I desperately try to keep myself updated), I'll start posting every few weeks the most interesting stories I've found regarding global ecommerce. Here are a few from the last few weeks: 1. Shopify calls it "the transformation of a lifetime": Their president said agentic shopping will bring context to commerce in ways search never…

Fresh from the floor at Shoptalk Spring 2026! 🎰 The "AI hype" is over—we’ve officially entered the era of Scale🚀 Retailers are no longer just experimenting; they are re-architecting their entire business around a unified data core. Here are my 3 massive takeaways from Mandalay Bay: 💡 The Big Shifts 🎯From Search to "Agentic Commerce" 🤖: We’ve moved past chatbots to AI Agents that act—navigating consultations dire…