AI is already changing how people shop. Personalized recommendations, generative search, and conversational assistants now guide consumers through their buying decisions.
The next leap is agentic commerce — where AI agents don’t just assist but act, making purchase decisions on behalf of consumers.
The economic potential is significant: McKinsey projects that agentic commerce could generate $1 trillion in US retail revenue by the end of the decade, representing roughly one-third of all online sales.
Tech leaders and retailers have already laid the groundwork for this shift. Perplexity’s Buy with Pro and OpenAI’s Instant Checkout let users research and buy directly within their AI search platforms. Shopify and Walmart are integrating their catalogs into ChatGPT, while PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard are building the rails for autonomous payments.
Now, a wave of startups is building on this foundation — creating specialized tools that span the infrastructure behind agentic systems to those powering every stage of the shopping journey, from discovery and comparison to checkout, fulfillment, and service.
Using CB Insights’ predictive intelligence on private companies, we identified 98 companies shaping agentic commerce. We mapped the agentic commerce landscape in 2 layers:
- AI agent tech stack: Horizontal AI infrastructure that helps companies across industries build, deploy, and manage agents — including orchestration, memory management, and data streaming platforms.
- Commerce solutions: Tools that power specific parts of the agentic journey, from discovery (generative engine optimization) to shopping support (AI shopping agents) to checkout (AI agent payments infrastructure).
We selected companies for inclusion based on Mosaic startup health and potential scores (600+) and funding recency (in the last 5 years). This market map is not exhaustive of companies operating in the space.
AI agent tech stack: Infrastructure behind agentic commerce
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Agent orchestration platforms look to connect shopping agents across the journey
As AI agents multiply, orchestration platforms are surfacing to connect and coordinate networks of agents — linking those that analyze consumer data, check prices, conduct searches, place orders, and more.
These companies lead all markets on the map, with 87% average year-over-year headcount growth (more than triple the overall average of 27%), and the highest average Mosaic score (739, the top 3% of all private companies) — signaling strong market health and future scalability. While most agent orchestration tools have broad enterprise applications, a new retail-focused cohort is emerging. Examples include:
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Authentication companies are building the trust rails for agentic commerce
Verification companies are building the trust infrastructure to authenticate both agents and their transactions, confirming their identities, validating their authority to act, and preventing fraud in real time. While agent authentication has largely focused on managing internal enterprise agents, new solutions are emerging to verify shopping agents in commercial transactions:
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- Prove Identity launched Verified Agent, linking digital identity, intent, and payment credentials.
- Trulioo has launched Know Your Agent (KYA) verification through partnerships with Worldpay, enabling merchants to verify AI agent legitimacy in real time.
- HUMAN is partnering with e-commerce fraud prevention company Riskified to use HUMAN’s AgenticTrust platform to address AI agent shopping risks.
Commerce solutions: A new value chain for digital shopping
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Generative engine optimization (GEO) is becoming the new search strategy
AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews are becoming new gateways for shopping. Traffic from these platforms to US e-commerce sites surged 4,700% year-over-year in July 2025, according to Adobe, and is expected to climb another 500% during the holiday season. This shift in how consumers discover products online makes GEO a must-have for brands and retailers. Two types of GEO companies are forming:
- Monitoring platforms that track brand visibility and ranking across generative engines.
- Content platforms that analyze and automatically generate LLM-optimized copy for brands.
Together, GEO startups have captured 30 deals YTD in 2025, accounting for 26% of all deal activity among the commerce solutions listed — a notable share given two-thirds of these companies are less than three years old, and the space holds an average Commercial Maturity score of 1.9, showing early but strong validation.
As generative discovery becomes a dominant search channel, brands that invest early in GEO will gain a visibility advantage before the space matures.
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Early adoption of AI shopping agents will prepare retailers for autonomous buying
Startups are embedding agents directly into merchants’ e-commerce systems, powering product recommendations, order tracking, and personalized experiences, even if most don’t yet complete checkout.
The market is expanding, with average headcount up 35% year-over-year, the fastest among commerce-solution categories.
Established players like Capacity and Constructor are scaling quickly, with headcount growth of 339% and 98% over the last year, respectively. The companies are connecting their existing general-purpose AI assistants and AI search tools with shopping agents, enabling more cohesive AI functionality. Early-stage entrants such as Envive focus only on shopping agents, offering a point solution that may be easier for retailers to integrate.
Retailers that deploy agents early will gain consumer trust, capture behavioral insights, and position themselves for autonomous transactions — before control of the shopping experience shifts toward AI platforms and big tech ecosystems.
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Collaboration is building the infrastructure for agentic payments
AI agent payments companies are building the rails that let agents transact securely and autonomously. Their tools — from AI-native wallets to virtual cards to programmatic payment controls — enable users to authorize and limit agent spending. The category leads all commerce solutions on the map with an average Mosaic score of 707, or the top 4% of all companies.
While some companies adapt existing infrastructure, a new cohort of AI-native startups are designing from the ground up. Stripe tops the list with a Mosaic score of 901, with new features for AI agent transactions. Emerging players like Skyfire (817), Catena Labs (762), and Circuit & Chisel (693) offer capabilities traditional processors don’t, including autonomous agent wallets and crypto-based payment rails.
But solving agentic payments also requires authentication, fraud protection, and consumer trust. Startups and incumbents are working together to address these challenges:
- Coinbase Ventures backed Skyfire, Catena, and Circuit & Chisel, and Stripe also invested in Circuit & Chisel’s seed round.
- Google introduced an agent payments protocol with 60 partners.
- Mastercard and Visa are building agentic payment systems in collaboration with several AI startups.
As fintech giants, AI-native startups, and commerce platforms converge, early collaboration is shaping how future transactions will happen: securely, autonomously, and through the interfaces consumers already trust.
Category overview
Click into each market to view the full description and market players on the CB Insights platform.
AI AGENT TECH STACK
- Agent-to-agent communication protocols to coordinate specialized AI agents across the shopping journey:
- Tooling that ensures agents make safe, explainable, and policy-compliant decisions:
- Retail data lakes from which agents can draw data like purchase history, inventory status, and user interaction data:
- Identity tools that manage user permissions, data sharing, and agent credentials:
COMMERCE SOLUTIONS
- Discovery: Brands and retailers generate awareness of their products and services.
- Consideration: Customers evaluate options and research features, pricing, and reviews.
- Purchase: Customers decide to buy and make a transaction.
- Agentic checkout
- AI agent payments infrastructure
- Service: Post-purchase, customers receive support or ongoing engagement.
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