By AdExchanger
Publication Date: 2026-02-20 05:03:00
Agentic Frenemies
Agentic commerce: Is it real? That’s the trillion-dollar question.
And the biggest retailers are convinced the answer is “yes.”
Walmart reported Q4 earnings yesterday and disclosed that the average order value for people using its AI shopper assistant Sparky is roughly 35% higher than for those who don’t. Amazon, meanwhile, claims its agentic assistant Rufus generated $12 billion in incremental sales during its first season – a figure that, as Jason Del Rey points out in The Aisle, Amazon hasn’t substantiated or detailed.
Be that as it may, agentic commerce is also spawning new partnerships and integrations, most of which are enemy-of-my-enemy-type alliances.
Last month, Google and Shopify debuted an AI framework called the Universal Commerce Protocol, which they hope will become a de facto standard for purchases via agentic tech. Walmart and Target are on board, among other retailers. The UCP came a couple of months after OpenAI introduced the Agentic Commerce Protocol, with early backers PayPal and Stripe.
These protocols are competing with each other – but all of them are really aimed at countering Amazon, which is probably the only player that could do it alone.
Then again, maybe not. The Aisle also reports that Amazon and OpenAI have held talks about incorporating OpenAI’s models into Amazon’s shopping recommendations.
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