A shared standard arrived: Google launched its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), which lets an AI agent read a shop's catalogue and complete a purchase, with Walmart, Target, Shopify and Stripe among the first to back it.

The 4% AI tax: OpenAI's "Buy it in ChatGPT" lets people check out single items inside the chat, but merchants pay OpenAI a 4% cut on each sale, on top of their usual Shopify and payment fees, pushing the all-in cost close to 9% on a typical order.

Big software is buying in: Salesforce bought an AI sales agent company, then agreed to buy Intercom's Fin customer serve agent, betting agents can act as part of your customer-facing team.

B2B is next: Forrester expects around one in five business-to-business sellers to face AI-led price negotiations by the end of this year.

Cold outreach got harder: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft now reject non-compliant bulk mail outright rather than quietly sending it to spam, and high-volume AI outbound is the first thing to get caught, because sending far more email is exactly what the new rules punish.

Inbound is the bright spot: a website visitor has already shown intent and there is no cold domain to burn, so AI does well answering questions and qualifying in the moment, and replying within a few minutes makes a real difference to whether a lead converts.

The takeaway: put AI on inbound first, get your response times down, and keep a person in the loop on anything cold.

Self-serve built the breakout names: Cursor reached 100 million dollars in annual revenue within its first year, with a team of under 20 and no sales force, and much of Anthropic's early growth came from developers adopting Claude on their own.

Activation is the hard part now: signing people up is no longer the challenge. It is activation, the point where a new user reaches their first real result, and weak activation drives much of the customer loss in the first 90 days.

A guided nudge pays off: free trials with no help convert at around 4.6%, while buyers who get a nudge, whether from a person or a smart onboarding flow, convert far better.

You must tell people they're talking to AI: if someone can chat with a bot on your website, the law now says you have to make clear it's AI and not a human. This applies to everyday website chat agents, not just risky uses, so most businesses are covered.

The stricter rules are still coming, just later: the tougher obligations for sensitive uses like hiring or credit scoring were delayed to December 2027, so you have more time to prepare for those, but they haven't gone away.

If you sell into the EU, check your agent now: make sure any chat or selling agent on your site introduces itself as AI, because this rule is already in force and carries real fines.

What agentic commerce really means: the plain-English version, and why it is worth your attention now.

How AI is changing product discovery: answer engines like ChatGPT are starting to decide which products get recommended, which changes how buyers find you.

Build or buy: what it takes to get your commerce and billing ready for it, with practical steps you can take now.