As we close out 2025, it’s clear this wasn’t just another year of incremental growth – it was a year of structural re-architecture. The marketplace model has moved from being a “digital shelf” to an integrated, AI-driven, and internationally fluid ecosystem. For sellers, the “Bigger Picture” of 2025 is the transition from managing listings to managing complex, cross-border value chains.
OpenAI and Perplexity on the Road to an AI Marketplace
Both OpenAI and Perplexity are pushing strongly toward becoming a marketplace with their agentic commerce projects: OpenAI introduced Shopping Research, a product search for ChatGPT that generates personalized buyer’s guides. Merchants can apply for greater visibility through an allow-list process. Perplexity also enables lightweight product data placement via a Merchant Program. What’s still missing for the marketplace transition is checkout.
Shein continues to face significant pressure in France: first, the government initiated to suspend the platform, then on Thursday, 200,000 Shein packages were inspected at Paris’ Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport. The goal: to remove illegal and unsafe products from circulation.
How could a AI-powered marketplace look like? Perplexity might give as a glimpse of the future. The AI service has introduced a shopping assistant last week, which can help you with complex, multi-step shopping requests. The AI finds answers to shopping prompts like “Find the comfiest headphones” by looking through the assortment of connected Shopify shops. So far, the Perplexity shopping experience is just available in the U.S., but other markets are likely to follow.
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