Retailers and technology firms are preparing for an anticipated shift to agentic commerce, in which Artificial Intelligence agents will purchase products on behalf of consumers. That scenario has not yet materialized at scale, but a foundation is emerging as Artificial Intelligence answer engines powered by large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Artificial Intelligence Mode and Gemini increasingly guide shoppers toward products and services. These tools are changing discovery and consideration behavior even though they are not yet responsible for driving substantial direct sales.
Between August 2025 and January, Artificial Intelligence answer engines drove 49.5 million visitors to the ecommerce sites of five big retailers-Amazon, Walmart, Target, Temu, and eBay-according to Similarweb, with Amazon grabbing 28% of that traffic followed by Walmart with 27%. The traffic generated by these Artificial Intelligence systems represents a growing but still fractional share of total ecommerce visits, highlighting both their emerging influence and current limitations. Other retailers including Amazon, Walmart, and Lowe’s are developing their own large language model powered chatbots that help shoppers find products on their ecommerce sites, further underscoring the strategic importance of search and conversational interfaces for commerce.
Brands and startups are competing to better understand how people discover and buy products in this evolving environment, aiming to capture consumer intent as it shifts from traditional search to conversational Artificial Intelligence. Companies are building tools and services to help advertisers optimize visibility within Artificial Intelligence driven answer engines and prepare for eventual agentic buying scenarios. While it remains unclear what fully mature agentic commerce will look like, the current experimentation around Artificial Intelligence search, chatbots, and answer engines is already beginning to reshape how retailers, marketers, and technology providers think about the future of shopping.
