Learnings on Agentic Commerce from Shopify, Uber Eats & Traditional Retailers

This time last year we ran lots of experiments of OpenAI Operator. We got good brand insights and fairly accurate completions from booking flights, hotels and fast delivery orders for food.

We’ve gone back into the new ChatGPT Agent mode for another round of experiments in food ordering for retail clients and got some interesting results.

1) Quick delivery services like Uber eats play pretty nicely with agents.
2) Most traditional retailers block agents. Treat them like spam.

Shopify’s offer represents a more progressive view of agents shopping.
(links in the comments)
They’ve launched agentic commerce native shopping inside your AI conversations.
One API.
Hundreds of millions of products. Merchants covered, compliance sorted.

Why it matters:
For consumers, shopping shows up where they already are - chat, voice, assistants.
For merchants, it’s distribution without dependency. Reach buyers in more places, instantly.
For developers, no mess. Shopify handles checkout, compliance, and complexity.

This is retail infrastructure, not a gimmick.

Agent Commerce - Shopify announcement
https://shopify.dev/docs/agents