May's Top Agentic Commerce News (we didn't cover yet): Elon/SpaceXAI Enter the Arena, Survey Data, New Forecast, Ads+AI and Much Much More!
In addition to May's Google (UCP, Universal Cart, Conversational Attributes) and Amazon (Rufus->Alexa for Shopping) news, there was a truckload of new data and other interesting news, let's catch up!
It was a super busy May here at Retailgentic HQ and I finally have caught up from a ton of travel to Google first and then two, yes TWO wall street conferences. Let’s catch up on some of the news and data that came out in may that helps us see the trend as we head into Summer 2026 and tee up for the big Holiday finish.
SpaceXAI Enters the Agentic Commerce Arena?
One of my most ‘unlikely to come true’ 2026 predictions was “X/Grok get into the game” (number 8 if you are keeping track).
With the SpaceX IPO roadshow starting this week, this item flew under the radar of all the activity going on around SpaceX. Gopuff released a pretty unique and powerful AI assistant powered by Grok. It’s not really a general-purpose shopping piece inside their Answer Engine, but to pull this off, Grok has to gain a deep understanding of their product catalog and the shopper behavior.
That means that all the pieces are there to up-level the Grok shopping experience. After the IPO, the pressure will be on for Grok/SpaceXAI to add a bunch of features and what better feature to add that’s totally in Elon’s wheelhouse (remember who founded PayPal?) than..Agentic Commerce for the holidays! let’s see - 174 days until Thanksgiving 🦃! Here’s the hype video→
Juniper Research’s Agentic Commerce Forecast
Juniper Research’s $15T global forecast for agentic commerce puts them in the same strike zone as Morgan Stanley (20%), PayPal(25%) and Bain (15-25%). Another datapoint that re-enforces the ‘consensus’ around Agentic Commrce being a material share of e-commerce by 2030.
Link here.
Nielsen IQ: 42% of Consumers Now Use AI to Shop
Nielsen IQ is the gold-standard of data companies and their panel is second-to-none. They released a set of updated consumer AI behavior data. The highlights:
42% of consumers have used at least one AI tool to shop within the past month
17% have used AI for product recommendations
10% have used a voice assistant to purchase and/or reorder items
19% use a subscribe or auto-replenish feature for repeat purchases
10% have engaged with an AI-powered shopping assistant
5% have used fully autonomous AI agents to place orders on their behalf
Survey data is making it clear that the Research→Find shopper journey in Agentic Commerce has officially gone mainstream. Now the question is how fast does Buy follow? I think we’re going to see some really interesting data come out of Holiday 26 - but we’ll have to wait until Q1 2027 to see it.
Link to details here.
Similarweb: AI Ads Webinar- A Treasure Trove of Data
Another company with great panel data is Similarweb. They recently had a webinar that went really deep into Agentic Ads and there was a truckload of new data I haven’t seen before. Here’s a sample of two slides I found particularly intriguing:
6X deeper AND 17 turns - wow! Also the intersection of AI and ads is going to generate SO MUCH ad inventory it’s going to be insane.
Ads in AI are actually generating commercial intent in addition to reacting to it!
If this is a topic that you’re interested in, I’d flag this one as ‘must watch’.
Accompanying presentation is here:
Bessemer Venture Partners: The Rise of the Delegated Buyer
Bessemer is a large top-tier venture capital fund that publishes some great content. They dropped a big Agentic Commerce thesis article that’s worth a read if you’re newer to the space and want a pretty tight recap of everything. It’s got a good hook: “The rise of the delegated buyer.”
Link here:
Walmart’s Sparky Makes Big Moves
Our friends at Digital Commerce 360 had a good summary of Walmart’s quarterly conference call where they spent a lot of time talking about some new Sparky data.
100% increase in weekly active users in the last quarter
40% improvement in answer quality
35% higher AOV vs. non-Sparky users
Added in-store and reorder capabilities
Expanded from GM into everyday essentials
Details here on Sparky’s Great quarter!
McKinsey: Agentic Commerce Autonomy is a Curve, Not a Switch
File this under: “things I’ve been saying for 18 months” 😄, but seriously it’s good to see McKinsey come around to the same conclusions. In short:
We’ll get to autonomy soon
But even then consumers will use Agentic Commerce in various ways (zero/research/find/buy/autonomous/etc.) depending on the tool they want for the shopping mission vs. the false binary of ‘all autonomous or it’s a hallucination’ mindset.
Link here.
Horizon: 82% of Consumers Use AI for Product Research
Here’s a bonus early-June survey from Horizon:
82% of consumers have used AI for product research or comparison
64% have used AI for price tracking
62% have used AI for research
90% report satisfaction with AI-assisted shopping experiences
This slide packs a big punch 🤜:
Detailed PDF here:
Link here.
News Summary
Stepping back, two big themes jump out from May’s data and news items:
Consensus is forming on the 2030 number. Morgan Stanley, PayPal, Bain, and now Juniper all in the 15-25% of e-commerce zone. Different ways they all get there, same triangulated result.
Consumer behavior continues to show Agentic commerce Adotion . NIQ at 42%, Horizon at 82% for research, Similarweb at 460M users and $1K+ brands buying ads, Walmart’s 35% AOV lift on Sparky. We are well past ‘is this real?’ and into ‘will it stay on exponential’ territory…
The adoption trends are certainly moving beyond experimentation. The next phase will likely be operational execution ensuring inventory, pricing, and customer-facing data remain accurate as AI increasingly influences purchase decisions. Retailers that combine AI readiness with strong operational visibility may have a significant advantage over the next few years.