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Agentic Commerce 2026

Publisher ResearchFarm Ltd.
Published Mar 01, 2026
SKU # RSFM21034531

Description

The retail landscape is undergoing a significant transformation as agentic commerce shifts consumer behaviour from traditional search to AI-driven shopping assistants - but it remains unclear how fast this change is actually progressing. Leading tech giants like Amazon, Google, and OpenAI are competing to establish dominant technical standards, and yet OpenAi has already buried its Instant Checkout again. While Amazon's Rufus currently leads in sales volume due to its deep integration with the existing marketplace, access to product and customer data, and delivery infrastructure other players face significant hurdles. The new consensus is that agentic AI is mostly a threat to Retail Media Networks rather than GMV. Retail media and advertising are being reimagined as brands pay for visibility within AI recommendations. However agentic recommendations suffer from real reliability issues. According to the AI boosters, the industry is moving towards a model where AI acts as a personalized concierge, managing product discovery, price tracking, and even automated replenishment for shoppers. Retailers are advised to approach these developments pragmatically, treating AI platforms as search amplifiers while protecting their exclusive first-party data.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary
Market shares of the AI players
ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Grok, Perplexity …
AI chatbot market share breakdown 2026
Agentic commerce players overview
The market sizes
Agentic Commerce Market sizes - how big is this?
Predictions and sizes - don’t believe the hype
Rufus GMV and who else? Do the sizes make sense?
The crucial battle?
Two rails - ACP vs AP2
Google’s UCP launched
Google’s UCP
Google’s UCP - the infrastructure layer
UCP rides on AP2, non compatibility with ACP
The ACP after OpenAI abandons Instant Checkout
OpenAI
OpenAI's Agentic Shopper & Commerce Offer
Data: WAU, prompts, adoption, shopping queries
Chat GPT advertising, ads as bots?
Open AI and off and on site advertising
Open AI, advertising and the data requirements
OpenAI ad costs three times as high as Meta’s
First ad trials within ChatGPT are go
Amazon and OpenAI agree to $50B investment
The reality check - Instant Checkout is dead
Three major hurdles OpenAI couldn’t crack
Agentic commerce moves into retailer apps
Walmart, Shopify
Walmart, OpenAi and ads in Sparky
Walmart’s retail media business
Shopify positioning itself for AI shopping
Shopify - maintaining control over checkout
Anthropic
Anthropic - careful steps towards a shopping agent
Amazon
Amazon's AI strategy
Amazon’s OpenAI partnership
Alexa+: in eternal catch up mode?
Amazon Rufus developments
Amazon: are the Rufus numbers reliable?
Amazon’s “Shop Direct” attracts anger
Is Rufus … not that good?
The leading player due to AMZN integration
Amazon expands Shop Direct/Buy-for-Me
Shop Direct/Buy-for-Me accepting feeds
Microsoft
Copilot as a B2B solution for retailers
Selling the AI agent infrastructure
Copilot and Stripe collaboration
Alphabet/Google
Google: search histories and advertising, AP2
Google Gemini, AI mode
Google’s Buy for me
The move towards monetising conversion
Gemini-Powered Ads, and powering Siri
Walmart & Gemini agentic shopping showcase
The potential leader in agentic commerce
Perplexity
Perplexity - the agent & the strategy
Perplexity user data
Amazon sues Perplexity over agentic shopping tool
Amazon wins the court case
Strategy
Search, Discovery and ads to change forever?
Will AI agents degrade retail websites?
Microsoft study - it just doesn’t work yet
LLM reliability remains an issue
The Bear case
Reasons why agentic commerce could fail
1) Consumer trust issues
AI black box decisions, failures, liability
2) Will retailers want this?
3) Economic and business model risks
4) Are agent recommendations ads?
Bull case
…there is also a consumer need case
and Big Tech has strong financial incentives
Recommendations
What retailers should do
Time for trials and errors
What to do about the threat to RMNs?
Outlook
Model obsolescence leading to agent degradation
GenAI answer diversity to increase
More complexity, how to optimise, fraud
Don’t believe the hype
No LLM output stability, reliability impact
Does AEO or GEO actually work?
Personalisation promises vs reality
Sources
Tables
AI Traffic Share
Potential GMV
Graphs
Agentic commerce players overview
The UCP

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