This is the year AI agents stopped being an experiment and became part of how people shop, not in headline-grabbing ways but in everyday moments—helping shoppers make sense of choices, assemble baskets, resolve trade-offs, and move toward action. Yet what looks like small convenience today is an early signal of a much larger shift in the way we shop. According to our research, even under moderate scenarios, AI agents could mediate $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.1 Because agents navigate the same internet as humans—visiting websites, engaging with APIs, and interacting with loyalty programs—they can scale quickly. And as they do, they are reshaping how intent forms, how products are discovered, and where value pools can be found.
