In a nutshell
November 2025 marked the tipping point of Agentic Commerce: AI agents evolved from simple chat tools into the next generation of Online Marketplaces. This analysis dissects the rapid rise of transactional agents from OpenAI, Perplexity and others and the economic pressure forcing them to become commerce engines. We explain why this shift creates a unique “mutual dependency” that gives retailers unexpected leverage and outline a survival strategy to navigate this new ecosystem without feeding a new monopoly.
⏱ Time to Read: appr. 4 min
Written by Ingrid Lommer, 08.12.2025
The Agentic Shift: Why November 2025 Marked the End of E-Commerce as We Knew It
If you felt a shift in the digital ground beneath you last month, you weren’t imagining it. November 2025 will likely go down in digital history as the moment the “Search” era ended and the “Agent” era truly began.
Agentic Commerce”—the idea of AI not just chatting, but actively shopping for us—is no longer a theoretical construct. Within a few weeks, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google all released new features which have the potential to redraw the map of the digital supply chain.
We are no longer looking at a new marketing channel. We are witnessing the birth of a new marketplace layer that threatens to disintermediate everything we built in the last two decades.
The Tipping Point: A November to Remember
To understand the magnitude, we have to look at the density of the events.
First, Perplexity broke the silence. The “answer engine” revealed a massive behavior shift: shopping-related queries on their platform have quintupled. But rather than just serving links, they launched “Instant Buy” in the US. By integrating deeply with PayPal, they solved the biggest friction point of conversational commerce: trust and transaction speed.
Then, OpenAI dropped the hammer on November 25th. They introduced “Shopping Research,” driven by a specific iteration of GPT-5 mini trained via reinforcement learning for product comparison. This isn’t just a chatbot hallucinating recommendations; it is a sophisticated research engine capable of synthesizing reviews, comparing technical specs, and creating “Buyer’s Guides” in seconds.
And almost simultaneously, Google woke up. With the latest updates to Gemini, the search giant played its trump card: physical infrastructure. Gemini’s new agentic capabilities can now leverage real-time inventory data and—crucially—utilize automated voice technology to call local stores for availability checks.
The “Why” is Financial: The Desperation Behind the Innovation
Why now? Why this sudden, frantic rush to own the checkout?
The answer isn’t just “user convenience.” It is financial survival. The uncomfortable truth about the AI revolution is that it is incredibly expensive. Training Frontier Models like GPT-5 or Gemini Ultra burns through billions of dollars in compute and energy. Inference costs—the cost of generating an answer every time a user prompts—are staggering compared to a traditional database search.
The current subscription models ($20/month for ChatGPT Plus or Perplexity Pro) are a drop in the bucket. They cannot sustain the infrastructure costs of the future.
Commerce, however, is the “Golden Goose.” It is the only sector with enough transaction volume and margin to subsidize the AI revolution. The AI giants are not entering retail because they love product discovery; they are entering it because they need the Affiliate Revenue, the future Commission Fees, and the inevitable “Sponsored Agent Recommendations” to balance their books.
The Symbiosis Trap: A Mutual Hostage Situation
This financial pressure creates a fascinating power dynamic, one that many retailers are currently underestimating.
There is a pervasive fear in the industry that AI Agents will simply “steal” the customer interface, turning brands into white-label logistics providers. While valid, this view ignores the technical reality: An AI Agent is useless without the retailer.
Consider the mechanics: An agent like ChatGPT can “read” the internet, but it cannot “know” the current state of a warehouse in Leipzig.
- Without real-time API access to a retailer’s inventory, the agent hallucinates availability.
- Without structured shipping data, it cannot promise a delivery date.
- Without dynamic pricing feeds, it quotes the wrong price.
We are in a “Mutual Hostage Situation.” The AI platforms desperately need the deep, structured data of retailers to make their agents functional and trustworthy. A shopping agent that recommends out-of-stock products is a failed product.
Conversely, retailers need the agents because that is where the consumer attention has migrated. The “Search Box” is losing relevance. If a consumer asks their agent to “buy the best running shoes for marathon training,” and your brand isn’t part of the agent’s consideration set (the so-called “Allowlist”), you effectively don’t exist.
The Strategic Playbook: Diversify or Die
So, how do we navigate this? The worst mistake brands can make right now is to repeat the errors of the “Amazon Era” or the “Google Shopping Era”—namely, handing all power to a single gatekeeper.
1. The Imperative of Diversification
OpenAI’s “Allowlist” for merchants is a clear signal: They are building a walled garden. If the industry collectively rushes only to OpenAI, we create a monopoly that will dictate margins within 24 months. Strategically, merchants must support challengers like Perplexity. Perplexity’s model is unique because it leaves the merchant as the “Merchant of Record” via PayPal. They facilitate the sale but don’t hijack the customer relationship. Strengthening these open ecosystems is the only way to prevent a “Winner-Takes-All” scenario.
2. Prepare for the “Monetization Hammer”
Currently, the platforms are in the “Seduction Phase.” Integration is free; traffic is organic. This is a trap—or rather, a temporary window of opportunity. The financial pressure mentioned above guarantees that this will change. We will see “Bidding for Recommendations” (AI-SEM) and transaction fees very soon. My advice: Join now while CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is near zero. Train the algorithms on your products while it’s free. Build your “Agent SEO” ranking now. But build your P&L with the expectation that this channel will become a paid media channel by 2026.
3. Data is the New UI
In Agentic Commerce, your visual storefront matters less than your JSON feed. If your shipping data, return policies, and stock levels aren’t accessible via high-speed, structured APIs, the agent will ignore you. The “User Interface” of the future isn’t a website; it’s a data feed. Brands that hoard their data will find themselves locked out of the conversation.
Conclusion: The Train Has Left the Station
The events of November 2025 were not a drill. The “Flywheel” of Agentic Commerce has started to spin. The platforms are hungry for data and revenue, and users are hungry for convenience.
For us at Marketplace Universe, the message is clear: The retailers who treat AI agents as “just another channel” will be left behind. Those who understand the underlying economics—and the leverage they hold with their data—will shape the new rules of the game.
The agents are ready to shop. The question is: Are you ready to negotiate with them?