Agentic checkout changes everything — you can now shop and buy, without ever visiting a retailer’s website

Google held their annual I/O conference this week and it left a lot of jaws on the floor with the sheer magnitude of innovations they introduced. Without a doubt, the biggest announcements were around eCommerce, where Google joined OpenAI and Perplexity, embracing a foundationally new way to shop, and no, it never involves visiting a retailer’s website 👀

The announcement is a one two punch to retailers who have been investing in AI search capabilities for their website, or trying to optimize their product pages to improve conversion rates. Those efforts matter a whole lot less now because the shopper now might not ever make it to their website to begin with.

So how does this new, AI-powered approach to eCommerce work? I’ll break it down.

First, like I said above, Google is joining OpenAI and Perplexity here, for anyone who thinks Google was the first to announce this concept, think again.

Perplexity announced the addition of agentic shopping back in November of 2024. I think it was this moment that likely everyone at Google started to freak out and realize they were falling behind, and they had until May, when I/O happens, to respond.

The key to what Perplexity announced is the combination of both agentic shopping, coupled with agentic checkout, as they said — “Perplexity is now a one-stop solution where you can research and purchase products”

About five months later, OpenAI joined the party announcing their own agentic shopping experience. While ChatGPT would allow you to have agents shop for you, the checkout experience still lived on the retailers website.

Then someone poked around in ChatGPTs code and found evidence of a very likely near-term collaboration to bring agentic checkout, powered by Shopify, to the platform.

(link to full article)

Like they say above, this would enable visitors to complete their purchases directly in chat, without ever visiting the retailer’s website.

While I think Perplexity was likely first here, and OpenAI quickly followed, Google completed the end-to-end experience yesteray by showcases the fully formed future of agentic shopping complete with checkout.

There is no doubt this moves means that retailers will see less traffic to their websites, and while they’re still making sales, Google, Perplexity, and OpenAI, will be taking a cut since they’ll be driving the entire end-to-end process.

This makes me think that retailers will need to double-down on AI innovations on their own sites, making the experience more compelling than what shoppers could get through an agentic shopping experience. Things like size charts should go the way of the dodo and (shameless plug) be replaced by AI-powered solutions like Bold Metrics that help shoppers find the right size.

The reality is — the concept of eCommerce is changing, and at the core of this change is a shift that has been a long time coming. As I wrote back in April:

And what’s wild is — today, in 2025, the approach hasn’t changed. Online shopping is still a digital version of the Sears Catalog, PDPs and all. While some retailers have experimented with online videos, for the most part, the Product Page of 2025, looks incredibly similar to the Product Page of 2005. It has a title, details, photos of the product, and a price. (Source)

We’ve been essentially shopping through the same experience that was introduced by the Sears catalog back in the 1800’s, through a catalog-based approach. This has meant that we, as consumers, need to go through a catalog, look at pictures, read descriptions, and make decisions the same way our grandparents did, just in a digital form.

Now that’s all very clearly changing, and the concept of AI agents not only shopping for us, but checking out, is coming, not soon, but now. It is times like these that innovative companies that double-down on AI can get massive leads, and those who continue to do things, “the way that has always worked,” get left behind.

The words innovate or die have never been more true. Game on 🤖

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