The acquisition of the Israeli firm comes as major technology platforms race to embed shopping into AI experiences.
The post PayPal to Acquire Cymbio for AI-Driven Agentic Commerce appeared first on TechRepublic.
The acquisition of the Israeli firm comes as major technology platforms race to embed shopping into AI experiences.
The post PayPal to Acquire Cymbio for AI-Driven Agentic Commerce appeared first on TechRepublic.
On Tuesday, eBay updated its User Agreement to explicitly ban third-party "buy for me" agents and AI chatbots from interacting with its platform without permission, first spotted by Value Added Resource. On its face, a one-line terms of service update doesn't seem like major news, but what it implies is more significant: The change reflects the rapid emergence of what some are calling "agentic commerce," a new category of AI tools designed to browse, compare, and purchase products on behalf of users.
eBay's updated terms, which go into effect on February 20, 2026, specifically prohibit users from employing "buy-for-me agents, LLM-driven bots, or any end-to-end flow that attempts to place orders without human review" to access eBay's services without the site's permission. The previous version of the agreement contained a general prohibition on robots, spiders, scrapers, and automated data gathering tools but did not mention AI agents or LLMs by name.
At first glance, the phrase "agentic commerce" may sound like aspirational marketing jargon, but the tools are already here, and people are apparently using them. While fitting loosely under one label, these tools come in many forms.
© Westend61 via Getty Images
Revolut Pay joins Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to support agent-led transactions, extending one-tap checkout across the UK and EEA
The post Revolut Joins Google AP2 to Enable AI-Led Checkout Across Europe appeared first on TechRepublic.
Revolut Pay joins Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to support agent-led transactions, extending one-tap checkout across the UK and EEA
The post Revolut Joins Google AP2 to Enable AI-Led Checkout Across Europe appeared first on TechRepublic.
Google is making a key push into AI-powered shopping with the unveiling of Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open technical standard aimed at letting shoppers buy products directly through AI chatbots and search interfaces. The protocol has backing from major retailers and payment players including Walmart, Target, Shopify, and Etsy.
Notably, there was one e-commerce giant not included in Sunday’s announcement: Amazon.
The Seattle-based company has long controlled the infrastructure of online shopping. But UCP offers an alternative pathway that could bypass Amazon, potentially steering shoppers to competitors at the critical moment of product discovery.
Announced over the weekend at the National Retail Federation conference in New York City, Google pitched UCP as a foundation for “agentic commerce,” a fast-emerging concept in which AI agents help shoppers carry out multi-step tasks on their behalf.
“AI agents will be a big part of how we shop in the not-so-distant future,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on X.
As AI chatbots increasingly influence shopping decisions, retailers face pressure to build custom integrations for each AI platform. UCP aims to eliminate that complexity by creating a shared “language” that lets AI agents securely access product catalogs, pricing, availability, promotions, loyalty programs, and checkout flows.
Shopify is building the foundation for agentic commerce.
— tobi lutke (@tobi) January 11, 2026
Universal Commerce Protocol, which we co-developed with Google, is now live. UCP will make it faster for agents and retailers to integrate.
It’s open by default, so platforms and agents can use UCP to start transacting… pic.twitter.com/Gs0vzvfjra
We spoke to industry analysts about UCP and the potential impact to Amazon’s grip on online retail.
UCP might not threaten Amazon’s logistics empire. But it could challenge the idea that shopping must begin inside Amazon’s app or website, said Maju Kuruvilla, CEO and founder of Seattle-based agentic commerce startup Spangle.
“This doesn’t change Amazon’s core advantage — price, selection, and convenience,” Kuruvilla said. “This is more of an additional discovery channel.”
Data suggests AI is already influencing online shopping behavior. A new report from Adobe Digital Insights found that AI-driven traffic to retail sites surged 693% year-over-year during the 2025 holiday season, with AI-referred visitors converting at higher rates and spending more time on sites than non-AI traffic.
But analysts caution that traffic growth and checkout partnerships do not equal behavior change.
Juozas Kaziukenas, an independent e-commerce analyst, said many forecasts around agentic commerce assume unrealistically fast adoption. He pointed to OpenAI research showing that only 37% of products returned by ChatGPT’s regular shopping results are relevant, calling that “shockingly low.”
“Product discovery, curation, personalization, and recommendations are still barebones on most AI tools,” he said.
Some argue that even if agentic commerce does take off, Amazon is unlikely to be displaced.
“It’s proven that consumers are drawn to general merchandise retailers that offer value, selection, and convenience,” said Scott Devitt, an analyst at Wedbush. “AI will have implications for retail, but those tenets won’t change. I think Amazon and Walmart will continue to do well.”
Ironically, an agentic commerce boom could actually give Amazon more leverage, said Sucharita Kodali, a retail industry analyst with Forrester.
“If, big if, there does appear to be a winner — and that would be years away — the winner will likely pay Amazon billions for its feed and cooperation, like Google pays Apple,” she said.
Kaziukenas said the growing wave of partnerships reflects a familiar dynamic: an anti-Amazon alliance.
“Everyone is forming partnerships with everyone else — everyone except Amazon,” he said, adding that the trend reflects Amazon’s position in the market. “They can ignore this for now. But it also shows how eager everyone else is to be part of something new to challenge Amazon.”
Amazon has been experimenting with its own AI-powered shopping features, including its Rufus assistant and the “Buy for Me” initiative. The company has not publicly announced support for open agentic commerce standards like UCP.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy acknowledged on a recent earnings call that agentic commerce “has a chance to be really good for e-commerce” and said that he expects the company to partner with third-party agents over time. But he also said agents “aren’t very good” at personalization and often display incorrect pricing and delivery estimates.
“So we’ve got to find a way to make the customer experience better and have the right exchange value,” Jassy said.
In November, Amazon sued Perplexity to stop the startup from using its AI browser agent to make purchases on its marketplace.
We reached out to Amazon for comment on UCP, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.
Google said that starting soon, shoppers using Google’s AI Mode in Search or the Gemini app will see buy buttons on eligible products from participating U.S. retailers. They can check out using payment details already saved in Google Wallet, with PayPal support coming later. Google says retailers remain “the seller of record” and maintain control over customer relationships.
Google’s announcement follows similar moves by other large tech companies. Last week, Microsoft debuted Copilot Checkout, allowing users to complete purchases directly inside its AI assistant. OpenAI, working with Stripe, has developed the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) for completing transactions within ChatGPT.
Emily Pfeiffer, a principal analyst at Forrester, said she’s encouraged to see companies pushing for standards — but stressed that it’s “still very early, the experiences are pretty poor, and adoption is very low.”
“We won’t say that forever, but behavior change takes time and it won’t happen if the shopping experiences don’t improve,” she said.
[Editor’s Note: Agents of Transformation is an independent GeekWire series and March 24, 2026 event, underwritten by Accenture, exploring the people, companies, and ideas behind AI agents.]
Microsoft is making its own bid to turn AI conversations into agentic commerce, announcing a new feature called Copilot Checkout that lets users complete purchases directly within its AI chatbot, without being redirected to an external website.
The company is betting that its existing enterprise technology footprint and established relationships with large retailers will give it an edge over OpenAI, Google, and Amazon in winning over merchants wary of giving up control to retail rivals or AI intermediaries.
“We’ve designed it in such a way that retailers own those relationships with the customers,” said Kathleen Mitford, corporate vice president of global industry marketing at Microsoft. “It is their data, it is their relationship, and that’s something that’s really important to us.”
It’s part of a broader AI rollout by Microsoft at NRF 2026, the retail industry’s annual conference in New York. Microsoft is also launching Brand Agents, pitched as a complete solution for Shopify merchants to add AI assistants to their websites, along with new AI tools to assist store employees and help retailers enhance their online product listings and metadata.
Copilot Checkout works by surfacing products from partner retailers within Copilot search results. Purchases can be completed without leaving the conversation. Microsoft says the retailer remains the merchant of record, handling fulfillment and customer service.
The bigger question for the tech industry is whether chat-based commerce is actually the next big thing. Forrester analyst Sucharita Kodali, for example, previously told GeekWire that “e-commerce isn’t a problem that needs to be fixed.” She added that it’s unclear what value chat-based commerce is bringing to retailers, “other than disintermediating Google.”
Microsoft’s Mitford offered a different take in an interview this week, saying that consumer behavior is shifting faster than it may seem. She drew a parallel to how quickly businesses moved from experimenting with AI to putting it into operation over the past year.
“I see the same thing happening with consumers … it just takes a little bit of time,” Mitford said, predicting that the speed of consumer adoption will eventually match the rapid uptake seen in the business world.
Copilot Checkout is rolling out now in the U.S. on Copilot.com, with PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe handling payment processing. Etsy sellers will be among the first available on the platform. Shopify merchants are set to be automatically enrolled following an opt-out window.
That last detail is notable given the backlash Amazon has faced over its “Buy for Me” feature, where brands complained about being included without consent and seeing inaccurate listings.
Microsoft’s approach is more tightly connected to its partners — the company said Shopify will management the opt-out process for its merchants — but automatic enrollment seems to raise the potential for some of the same concerns. (We’ve contacted Shopify for more information.)
More broadly, Microsoft is playing catch-up on the consumer side.
OpenAI launched Instant Checkout in ChatGPT last September, partnering with Shopify and Stripe to let users buy from more than a million merchants. Google followed in November with its own “Buy for Me” feature which lets its Gemini assistant purchase products on a user’s behalf.
Despite its inroads with businesses, Copilot has a fraction of ChatGPT’s market share with consumers. Recent data from Similarweb’s Global AI Tracker showed ChatGPT with about 68% of AI chatbot web traffic, with Google Gemini at 18% and Copilot in the single digits.
But Microsoft has its advantages: Unlike Amazon and Google, which compete directly with retailers through their own marketplaces, it isn’t a retailer. And retail has long been a major vertical for its enterprise cloud and software business, with large chains running on Azure and Microsoft 365.
Mitford said Microsoft is leaning on its existing trust and long-standing relationships with retailers, along with a commitment to responsible AI, to help differentiate itself from rivals.
Microsoft is making the broader case for AI to retailers based on return on investment. A Microsoft-commissioned study from IDC, released in November, found that retail and consumer packaged goods companies are seeing a 2.7x return on every dollar spent on generative AI.
Mitford, a former fashion designer who has been in the technology industry for most of her career, said she sees the retail sector among the leaders in AI uptake across the business world.
The technology, she said, is being “adopted at a pace that I’ve never seen.”
Spangle AI, a new Seattle startup that helps online retailers build customized shopping experiences in real-time, announced a $15 million Series A investment round led by NewRoad Capital Partners. The company is now valued at $100 million.
Founded last year by former technology leaders at Amazon, Spangle can instantly generate a tailored storefront for individual customers based on how traffic flows in from social platforms, AI search tools, and even autonomous shopping agents.
For example, a shopper clicking an Instagram ad might see an experience that mirrors social browsing. Or, someone looking for dresses could be served a page with other relevant events-related products.
Spangle is betting that the existing e-commerce stack, built for customers coming directly to a brand’s website, is getting replaced with something more contextual — beyond the traditional product page.
“The problem is that websites are not designed to continue a journey that originated somewhere else,” said Spangle CEO Maju Kuruvilla, a former vice president at Amazon, where he worked on Prime logistics and fulfillment.
Spangle’s system, powered by the latest generative AI tools, does not rely on user identity or historical personalization. Instead, it focuses on intent and context — whether a shopper is browsing, comparison-shopping, or ready to buy — and adapts product selection, layout, and content accordingly. It’s trained on a retailer’s catalog, brand guidelines, and performance data.
The approach has resonated with large fashion and retail brands including REVOLVE, Steve Madden, and Alexander Wang. According to the company, customers using Spangle have seen conversion lifts of up to 50% and significant improvements in return on ad spend. The company says it has landed nine enterprise customers in its first nine months. It declined to share specific revenue metrics.
Kuruvilla said e-commerce retailers don’t have a problem figuring out how to catch a customer’s interest. But he believes what happens after a shopper clicks on an advertisement is a different story.
“Conversion from all this traffic that’s discovered outside is a huge problem for all these brands,” he said.
Spangle is a new player in the emerging field of agentic commerce that could challenge existing on-site experience vendors and other e-commerce personalization competitors such as Adobe or Mastercard Dynamic Yield.
Kuruvilla previously was CEO and CTO at Bolt, the controversial “one-click checkout” e-commerce startup that reached a valuation of $11 billion. He also worked at Microsoft, Honeywell, and Milliman.
Spangle co-founder and CTO Fei Wang was CTO at Saks OFF 5TH, a subsidiary of Saks 5th Avenue. Wang also spent nearly 12 years at Amazon as an engineer. Yufeng Gou, head of engineering, was also previously at Saks OFF 5TH. Karen Moon, Spangle’s COO, is a longtime investor and former CEO at Trendalytics.
Seattle-based Madrona, which previously invested, was part of the latest round, in addition to DNX Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, and other angel investors. The company, which has less than 10 employees, raised a $6 million seed round last year. Total funding to date is $21 million.
Related: Microsoft debuts Copilot Checkout, joining AI shopping race vs. Amazon, Google and OpenAI
Amazon is facing complaints from independent retailers over a new shopping experiment that lets customers buy products from other websites directly within Amazon’s app.
The feature, called Buy for Me, started rolling out in April last year alongside another program known as Shop Direct. The tools are designed to help shoppers find products that aren’t sold on Amazon — and, in some cases, allow Amazon to complete a purchase on a customer’s behalf using AI.
Bloomberg, Modern Retail, Financial Times, and others published stories this week citing brands who say they were caught off guard when their products appeared in Amazon search results. Some said they only discovered the program when strange orders started arriving from Amazon-linked email addresses.
Among the complaints raised by brands:
In a statement to GeekWire, an Amazon spokesperson said participation in both programs is optional and that the company has received positive feedback.
“Shop Direct and Buy for Me are programs we’re testing that help customers discover brands and products not currently sold in Amazon’s store, while helping businesses reach new customers and drive incremental sales,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “Businesses can opt out at any time by emailing branddirect@amazon.com, and we remove them from these programs promptly.”
Listings created with Buy for Me are labeled as coming from other stores when they show up within Amazon search results. Amazon’s system checks the brand’s website to confirm the item is in stock and that the price is accurate. Product and pricing information is pulled from public information on a brand’s website, though Amazon says in an FAQ page that it “may modify these for display on the Amazon Shopping App.”
Amazon said in November that products available to purchase via Buy for Me had increased from 65,000 to more than 500,000.
The pushback from independent sellers — who make up more than 60% of Amazon’s online store sales — highlights a growing tension as tech companies roll out AI-powered shopping tools. The new technology is sparking debate over who controls product discovery and the customer relationship when platforms can act as an intermediary — or even a buyer — on behalf of consumers.
In November, Amazon sued Perplexity to stop the startup from using its AI browser agent to make purchases on its marketplace, citing computer fraud laws and security risks, along with a “significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience it provides.”
Related: AI is coming for your shopping cart: How agentic commerce could disrupt online retail
[Editor’s Note: Agents of Transformation is an independent GeekWire series and 2026 event, underwritten by Accenture, exploring the people, companies, and ideas behind the rise of AI agents.]
Imagine telling your AI assistant that you need a new winter jacket. It already knows your style preferences and budget from previous purchases. The AI searches across dozens of retailers, analyzes reviews, checks for sales, and comes back with a list of ranked options.
You pick one you like. The AI asks if you want to wait until the price drops. A week later, there’s a sale. The AI completes the purchase, applies loyalty points, selects the fastest free shipping option, and sends you a confirmation. Your jacket shows up within days.
This is the promise of “agentic commerce” — AI systems that research, compare, and even buy on your behalf. Tech giants, startups, and retailers are all racing to build it. McKinsey projects the market could reach $1 trillion in the U.S. alone by 2030.
For the latest installment in our Agents of Transformation series, we interviewed startup founders, consumer brand marketing leaders, industry analysts, and others to better understand how agentic commerce could change the way we shop — now, in the future, or maybe not much at all.
Some key takeaways from our reporting:
Major players are making moves.
Adobe reported that AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites jumped 670% year-over-year on Cyber Monday.
But it’s still early days. For ChatGPT, referrals to e-commerce apps represented only 0.82% of all sessions over Thanksgiving weekend. In a recent OpenAI study of about 1.1 million ChatGPT conversations, 2.1% of activity was classified as “Purchasable Products.”
There’s still a big gap between the pitch and what these tools can actually do today. Practical use cases remain limited.
“I am shocked at the promises versus reality,” said Emily Pfeiffer, a principal analyst and digital business expert with Forrester.
Still, the builders we spoke with see the current moment as the beginning of a fundamental shift.
“I think this is much bigger than even the invention of the online store,” said Jonathan Arena, co-founder of e-commerce AI startup New Generation.
McKinsey outlines three main ways agentic commerce could work:
Today’s reality is closer to a fancy search than full autonomy. AI chatbots can suggest products, but completing a purchase still typically requires clicking through to a retailer’s site. A handful of retailers have experimented with checkout-in-chat, but Pfeiffer said some polished demos don’t actually work in the real world.
“The experiences that are out there today, in my opinion, are extremely premature,” she said.
There’s also a broader debate about whether AI shopping assistants are solving a problem that doesn’t exist for specific purchase categories. For fashion, gifts, home decor — things where discovery is part of the value — many consumers may not want an agent to shortcut that process.
Agentic commerce could work best for low-consideration, commodity purchases — like household staples and replenishment items.
The concept becomes more complex outside of a brand’s own site or app, in AI search tools where an agent might eventually handle the entire shopping process without a user ever opening a retailer’s website. Pfeiffer believes this is where truly autonomous commerce is most likely to show up, though probably in specific situations rather than as a full replacement for browsing.
But she said any substantial shifts will take time. “If we get there, it’s not soon,” Pfeiffer said.
Agentic commerce isn’t possible without the right infrastructure. E-commerce websites were designed for humans typing keywords into a browser — not AI agents that need to read pages and place orders on their own.
New tools are starting to fill that gap.
For retailers, this patchwork can be confusing and expensive, especially as there’s no guarantee which protocol will become dominant.
“Each protocol is a burden for the merchant,” said Kumar Senthil, founder of Firmly, a Seattle-area startup building software that hides some of this complexity. His company, which recently partnered with Perplexity, lets merchants connect to multiple protocols through a single interface.
Firmly is trying to solve a basic problem: merchants can’t afford to integrate with every AI platform, but they also don’t want to miss out on any of them.
Senthil, who previously built Samsung’s e-commerce platform, said online retailers need to have “microstores” everywhere. Their traditional websites, he predicts, will go dark.
“The stores are going to be distributed across the internet,” he said.
But AI assistants need to draw on data from somewhere — which means a brand’s homepage could still serve an important purpose, even if the act of purchasing gets dispersed.
Brands like Brooks Running are refocusing their sites to make them easy for AI systems to read and understand. “We’re continuing to emphasize crawling, indexing, and ranking technical SEO opportunities through the lens of AI,” said Ryan Ngo, vice president of North America marketing and e-commerce at the Seattle-based company.
Beyond making a website “AI-ready,” Arena said brands should let shoppers ask questions about their products in plain language, using built-in AI chat on their own sites. “People are going to be frustrated that your website can’t answer them,” he said.
In Pfeiffer’s view, the bigger strategic risk lies in places brands don’t control — AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT or Gemini that could become powerful new gateways for finding and buying products. In that world, brands face the same decisions they once confronted with Amazon: what to share in each place people might shop, what to keep exclusive, and how to protect pricing and sensitive data.
Amazon helped shape modern online shopping when the Seattle-based giant started selling books on the internet more than three decades ago. The company is now a giant in online retail, and it’s staring at another potential shift with the rise of agentic commerce.
Amazon is in a tricky spot. The company captures roughly 40% of U.S. e-commerce spending and has a fast-growing advertising business that brings in around $70 billion a year — revenue that depends on humans browsing and clicking.
In November, Amazon sued Perplexity to stop the startup from using its AI browser agent to make purchases on its marketplace, citing computer fraud laws and security risks, along with a “significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience it provides.” Amazon has maintained what Bloomberg described as “a walled garden” that doesn’t allow autonomous shopping on its site.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas called the lawsuit “a bully tactic” and argued consumers should be free to use whatever AI assistant they prefer.
“Amazon should love this. Easier shopping means more transactions and happier customers,” Srinivas wrote. “But Amazon doesn’t care. They’re more interested in serving you ads, sponsored results, and influencing your purchasing decisions with upsells and confusing offers.”
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy acknowledged on a recent earnings call that agentic commerce “has a chance to be really good for e-commerce” and said that he expects the company to partner with third-party agents over time. But he also said agents “aren’t very good” at personalization and often display incorrect pricing and delivery estimates.
“So we’ve got to find a way to make the customer experience better and have the right exchange value,” Jassy said.
Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, Rufus, now has more than 250 million active customers. Amazon says that customers using the assistant during a shopping trip are 60% more likely to complete a purchase.
The company has also been testing a “Buy For Me” feature that lets customers purchase products from other brands’ sites, from inside Amazon’s mobile shopping app.
Senthil, the Firmly CEO, sees Amazon as potentially vulnerable. He questioned whether Amazon’s delivery speed advantage — long considered a competitive moat — will matter as much in a world where consumers place less emphasis on faster shipping times.
The rise of third-party AI agents, such as Perplexity’s Comet browser, could also weaken Amazon’s grip on customers. E-commerce journalist Jason Del Rey noted that if agents own the relationship and steer shoppers across sites, Amazon risks looking more like fulfillment infrastructure. That raises a long-term question, he said — if agents sit between shoppers and stores, who ends up capturing most of the value?
But others don’t expect AI tools to displace Amazon for now.
“It is highly unlikely that ChatGPT will be a dominant shopping cart mainly because e-commerce isn’t a problem that needs fixed,” said Sucharita Kodali, a retail industry analyst with Forrester. “It’s perfectly easy to buy on Amazon as hundreds of millions of people around the world already do every year.”
Kodali added: “It’s unclear what value ChatGPT is bringing to retailers, other than dis-intermediating Google.”
Last month Google unveiled a suite of AI shopping features powered by Gemini, including “agentic checkout,” which lets users set rules such as maximum spend or product specifications. It’s also building the infrastructure layer with AP2.
Microsoft, meanwhile, is positioning itself to help retailers and brands adapt to agentic commerce, whether building assistants into their websites or surfacing their offerings in third-party chatbots.
“We prioritize robust frameworks, open standards, and trust infrastructure so intelligent agents can operate reliably and securely throughout the commerce ecosystem,” said Kathleen Mitford, corporate vice president of global industry at Microsoft, responding to questions via email.
Finding the perfect winter coat based on your personal preferences may be just the start when it comes to AI assistants knowing what to purchase for you.
“Imagine an agent recognizing that the bathing suit you’re buying isn’t just another item, but part of preparing for an upcoming vacation and tailoring recommendations accordingly,” Mitford said.
That example would require consumers to offer up more personal data such as calendars and budget information. But it could enable a better experience, according to Arena.
“We’re talking about a brand being able to personalize experiences to all of their customers across the internet — not only on a first-party website that they own,” he said.
John Larson, who helped launch business messaging company Zipwhip (acquired by Twilio), said conversational commerce is evolving toward two-way interactions, enabling retailers to have more effective interactions with customers.
“We do believe that real conversational commerce leveraging agentic AI is absolutely the future,” said Larson, now an investor in Seattle startup Ambassador. “You’re getting your needs met, and you’re having a conversation.”
Lorrin Pascoe, CMO at Vancouver, B.C.-based footwear retailer Vessi, said he believes AI agents will become an important way to reach customers. “For us, it’s really realizing that this isn’t a gimmick,” he said. “It is something that is foundational in changing behaviors.”
Vessi began in 2018 as an online-only footwear company. This month, it’s opening its first U.S. store in Bellevue, Wash. — reversing the course that brick-and-mortar retailers took when e-commerce pushed them online. It’s a reminder that retail rarely follows a predictable path, and in the same way, there’s no telling where agentic commerce will ultimately land.
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