Agentic commerce: The rise of the delegated buyer
/AI agents aren’t running your shopping yet. But the new stack is forming and the time to build is now.
A consumer wakes up to a notification on a Friday morning:
"I reordered your bi-weekly groceries, added the items you flagged throughout the week, and moved delivery to Saturday at 2pm so it lands before meal prep. Order total: $120.32, charged to AMEX 1234."
At the same time, a brand's internal dashboard lights up:
"Agent-to-agent ordering completed. 3,126 agent orders were placed today."
Incredibly exciting vision. Now you go to an AI agent of your choice, ask it to find you a specific type of dress, and… you’re likely waiting. So, you hit refresh and the results come back technically correct, but just not quite right.
The seamless delegation promise of agentic commerce is not here yet, but the signals are real enough that ignoring it would be the actual mistake.
We're already seeing the early glimmers. According to a survey conducted by Deloitte, retailers are seeing 15-20% of referral traffic coming from AI chat interfaces and that's just the beginning. According to McKinsey research, the U.S. B2C retail market alone could see $1T+ in orchestrated revenue by 2030, with global projections as high as $3-5T. For context, Forbes estimates global e-commerce revenue this year to be ~$6T.