Major tech firms accelerate move towards agentic commerce with AI-driven purchasing tools

Tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are advancing automated buying systems, setting the stage for a shift in retail and business procurement driven by AI agents and structured data exchange.

Recent moves by major technology companies are hastening development of so‑called agentic commerce, a model in which software agents discover products, compare suppliers and carry out purchases with little or no human intervention. The shift is still nascent, but initia...

tives from large retail, payments and software firms are beginning to assemble the technical and commercial plumbing that could make automated buying a routine part of both consumer and business procurement.

Amazon has been among the most active architects of this emerging landscape. According to Amazon, it has broadened Shop Direct to surface products sold on external merchant websites within its own search results by ingesting merchant product feeds, thereby extending visibility for sellers beyond Amazon’s marketplace. The company has also announced a “Buy for Me” capability that, it says, can complete purchases on third‑party sites using customers’ stored payment and delivery details so that orders appear and are tracked inside the Amazon interface while fulfillment remains the merchant’s responsibility. Amazon is additionally expanding conversational shopping assistants such as Rufus to help customers research and evaluate options. Amazon described these features as tools to streamline discovery, comparison and checkout across multiple storefronts.

The prospect of independent AI agents operating across retail platforms, however, is already confronting legal and commercial resistance. The Guardian reported that Amazon filed suit against Perplexity over an agent called Comet, alleging it accessed Amazon accounts and purchasing functions without permission; a US district judge subsequently granted a preliminary injunction that, according to MediaPost, bars the agent from placing orders on Amazon. The episode illustrates a central tension in agentic commerce: will retailers permit third‑party bots to transact directly, or will they insist customers use vendor‑controlled assistants?

Other technology firms are moving in parallel. Google has integrated shopping features into its Gemini chatbot through partnerships with major merchants, allowing users to browse and buy inside a conversational interface, according to the Associated Press. Commerce platform vendors including Shopify and enterprise software suppliers are also building capabilities that let conversational AI access merchant catalogues and initiate purchases. Microsoft, for example, has embedded procurement functions into its Copilot tools to allow transactions within business applications. Industry participants describe these efforts as attempts to shift product information exchange away from scraped webpages toward structured APIs that deliver specifications, price and availability in machine‑readable form.

Payments and marketplace infrastructure providers are beginning to address the authentication and authorisation problems that automated purchasing creates. The lead report notes a Mirakl partnership with JPMorgan Chase aimed at enabling payments for transactions started by software agents inside marketplace environments, a development that focuses on verifying an agent’s right to act on a buyer’s behalf. Financial rails and identity controls are widely regarded as prerequisites for scaling agentic commerce safely.

For distributors, the implications could be wide ranging. Automated buyers will rely heavily on consistent, machine‑readable product data, up‑to‑date inventory figures and transparent fulfilment metrics when selecting suppliers across multiple platforms. Distributors that maintain comprehensive product attributes, robust data feeds and accessible APIs are likelier to be surfaced by AI sourcing queries; conversely, incomplete or inconsistent information may cause suppliers to be overlooked. The balance of competition may therefore shift from merchandising and web presentation toward data quality, pricing clarity and delivery performance.

Despite the momentum, agent‑led purchasing remains largely exploratory today. Most business‑to‑business transactions continue to be initiated by human buyers through ecommerce sites or procurement systems. Yet the proliferation of platform features, retailer experiments and payment initiatives suggests the foundational pieces for automated procurement are being put in place. Over time, AI agents could alter how suppliers are evaluated and chosen online, prompting distributors and merchants to prioritise the structured exchange of product and fulfilment data if they wish to remain selectable by software buyers.

Source: Noah Wire Services