What Does Wall St. Think About Agentic Commerce? Details from a Buy-Side Breakfast đł Discussion
Eggs, bacon, orange juice and a side of Agentic Commerce - Yum! đ
The Wednesday after NRF in NY, we had a bunch of client meetings and that Wed morning I was invited by Colin Sebastian and Zak Witaszek to sit down with some Wall St. folks and talk Agentic Commerce.
Wall Street and Agentic Commerce
This is the 5th of these (first breakfast, but fifth overall including virtual) I've done in the last 6 months. The first one in June/July '25 was lightly attended and the questions were of the vein: "Why do you think this is going to be such a big deal?" "How is this different than Google's 5 other attempts at this over the decades" - basically 'Agentic Commerce, yawn...đ„±"
Fast forward to Jan 2026 after the absolute Agentic Commerce frenzy that was NRF, we were sold out, everyone showed up early and it was the most intense hour of questions I've had in a while. Top tier buy-side firms were represented and had what I'd call 'PHD-level' agentic commerce questions. What a wild 6 months it's been! The report is attached - there was no agenda, these are the topics that organically came up from the attendees, not me.
Why Does This Matter?
E-commerce Technology trends tend to start adoption from consumer behavior changes. Thatâs the first principle of whatâs going on with Agentic Commerce. But, I donât know a specific number, but the people at this breakfast work for the largest shareholders in the US. They are totally dialed in now on Agentic Commerce and if you listen to earnings calls, they are asking technology companies, retailers and brands tough questions: When are you launching on Instant Checkout and UCP? Why are you blocking crawlers?
TL;DR of the Wall St. Discussion
If you don't have time to read the 9 page report, the summary highlights are:
Google reaching parity with ChatGPT â With the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) announced at NRF, Google has closed the gap on agentic commerce capabilities after being "about two steps behind." Google will not charge a take-rate for in-app transactions, contrasting with OpenAI's ~4% commission.
ChatGPT becoming a trusted shopping companion â OpenAI's improving memory means "the app knows more about you than Facebook." Expect OpenAI to launch advertising and potentially even build out fulfillment services despite the challenges other platforms have faced.
Free Google traffic (~35-40% of retail visits) is at risk â AI Overviews for commercial queries are disrupting organic traffic to merchant sites, creating dependency on AI apps for customer acquisition. Paid Google traffic is facing a 10-15% decline.
Brands must build richer product catalog context â Adding attributes like âscent profilesâ for beauty products helps surface listings in AI shopping. LLMs currently donât consider images when making recommendationsâonly text-based product attributes.
Retail media networks face a rough year â The shift from traditional to agentic traffic will pressure retail media, though new ad formats may mitigate some impact.
Amazon's fulfillment moat protects them â Supply chain capabilities create a competitive moat, leaving Amazon well-positioned even as they take a measured approach. Expect new ad formats like "sponsored prompts" and selective catalog integration (e.g., Zappos) with agentic platforms.
I was most surprised by the depth of questions on RMNs - this is the most financial savvy group of people youâll ever meet and they very quickly got the risk facing the companies with RMNs - thatâs super-high margin revenue and if it is âat riskâ it has some revenue implications, but very material margin implications which rolls straight into EPS.
Conclusions
Wall St is very much awake to the opportunities, the risk and the scale of Agentic Commerce. For Retailgentic readers what this means is if you work for a public company either in the US or globally, the âtop downâ pressure to have a coherent Agentic Commerce plan and execute quickly on that plan is going to increase to a 11 out of 10 in 2026.
Questions? Throw them in the comments: