Agentic commerce: the end of the endless scroll

As with any investment, your capital is at risk.

 

We’ve all been there: hunting for the perfect gift for a loved one. You head to a trusted brand’s website and start scrolling. If you’re lucky, you find the right thing quickly. More often, you go down a rabbit hole of recommendations and add-ons you didn’t even know you wanted when you first arrived on the site. 

 

Designed for detours 

Ecommerce has been built to encourage and incentivise this meandering journey of discovery. The more you click and the longer you linger, the more opportunities for upselling and the more data the merchant collects. Over time, repeat purchases get easier and switching gets harder. 

But something is coming for ecommerce... An elite team of savvy personal shoppers, ready to help you find the right thing faster and with fewer add-ons. This is agentic commerce, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). 

These AI agents do not just advise. They act. They can search, compare options across price, delivery speed, returns policy and merchant reliability, then complete payment and track delivery with minimal effort from the customer. 

 

The risk of AI disintermediation 

What began in recent months as anxiety about AI challenging the durability of software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses has spread to consumer-facing digital platforms that rely on controlling the customer journey. Many of these companies have been caught in the crosshairs and have seen significant share price declines. 

If shoppers use AI agents – via a conversational interface such as ChatGPT – to search, compare and purchase, consumer-facing digital platforms that monetise discovery and the customer journey are exposed to disruption. This would include everything from ecommerce marketplaces to food delivery and ride-hailing networks. 

 

Five indicators of a defensible moat 

This is not a new line of thinking for us. We have spent years asking what makes a digital platform hard to displace, and how value can shift when the way people shop changes, whether through mobile, social commerce, or now AI. What is new is the speed at which agentic AI is improving, and the way markets have begun to reprice perceived winners and losers.  

Within that context, we are revisiting our holdings through a simple lens: which competitive advantages should endure in an agentic commerce world? What a defensible competitive moat looks like for one player may not be the same for another, but certain characteristics will be particularly important for resilience: 

1. Dominant market share – The largest players set the terms for third-party AI agents and steer shoppers towards their own apps and in-house shopping assistants, such as Amazon’s Rufus. Rufus helps users search, compare, and get product recommendations directly within the Amazon app and website.
2. High-frequency habits – The more often people use a service, the more it becomes the default starting point. That is hard to dislodge, even with an AI agent in the mix, as seen in high-frequency ecosystems like Mercado Libre, the Latin American retail and payments platform. High-frequency habits are most visible in its fintech arm Mercado Pago, where users average around 16 transactions per month, compared to an average of five at PayPal. 
3. Additional services – Payments, logistics and credit services deepen relationships and raise switching costs. South East Asian ecommerce, gaming and fintech company SEA Ltd’s logistics network is built to operate in challenging geographies. An AI agent cannot replicate the on-the-ground ability to navigate rural areas and inconsistent address formats, or handle cash-on-delivery. 
4. Coordination advantage – In supply chains in which sellers are scattered and data is messy, businesses stay valuable where they do real coordination work. This is DoorDash’s role in restaurant delivery. An AI agent can help place an order, but it cannot replace the on-the-ground orchestration needed to ensure the food is prepared and delivered reliably. 
5. High customer trust – Reliable payments, security and customer support still matter even when an AI agent is shopping. That supports ecommerce services company Shopify’s edge through Shop Pay, its accelerated checkout and payments offering. 

Where we can identify more than one of these indicators of a defensible moat within portfolio holdings, we can take even more confidence in these companies’ ability to navigate AI-driven change.  

 

Why Shopify is well placed for agentic commerce 

Shopify is a Global Alpha holding that we believe is particularly well-positioned to succeed in an agentic commerce world. It scores highly on two of these characteristics: not just high customer trust but also coordination advantage. 

Think of Shopify as the “behind-the-scenes” system that helps merchants run commerce across channels, whether a purchase starts on a website, in a chat interface, or in-store. As AI agents move beyond helping people discover products to completing checkout, Shopify has been building tools to enable them to check out safely and reliably. It is set up to monetise agent-led checkout because it earns fees on the crucial and high-stakes parts of a transaction that do not disappear when shopping moves onto an AI interface: taking payment securely, verifying the buyer, preventing fraud, calculating tax and shipping, and handling returns and refunds. 

Early signs suggest AI is already driving incremental demand to Shopify merchants, with orders from AI search up 15 times since January 2025 (albeit from a small base). At the same time, ecommerce is still less than 20 per cent of total global retail. The lower-friction nature of agentic AI transactions could expand that share by moving more everyday purchases online.  

Even if it mainly reshuffles existing spend, however, Shopify can benefit because its role is channel-agnostic. This means it only needs merchants to keep using Shopify as the engine powering checkout and fulfilment, regardless of the channel on which the sale is made. 

 

Taking advantage of uncertainty 

Agentic AI is still in its very early stages and we don’t know what it will look like in one year, let alone five. What is certain is that, like all disruptive shifts, it poses a threat to some players but creates significant opportunities for others. 

Where consumer-facing digital platform holdings have been caught in the broader AI-driven sell-off, we are reviewing each company through the agentic AI lens and stress-testing the durability of its competitive moat. We aim to take advantage of mispricing where we have differentiated insight, and adjust exposures where needed. We are already considering changes that can put the portfolio in an even stronger position as this shift gathers pace. 

 

 

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Risk factors

The views expressed should not be considered as advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a particular investment. They reflect opinion and should not be taken as statements of fact nor should any reliance be placed on them when making investment decisions.

This communication was produced and approved in March 2026 and has not been updated subsequently. It represents views held at the time of writing and may not reflect current thinking.

Potential for profit and loss

All investment strategies have the potential for profit and loss, your or your clients’ capital may be at risk. Past performance is not a guide to future returns.

This communication contains information on investments which does not constitute independent research. Accordingly, it is not subject to the protections afforded to independent research, but is classified as advertising under Art 68 of the Financial Services Act (‘FinSA’) and Baillie Gifford and its staff may have dealt in the investments concerned.

All information is sourced from Baillie Gifford & Co and is current unless otherwise stated.

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