AI Shopping Wars: Rivals Form Anti-Amazon Alliance as Agentic Commerce Battle Intensifies

AI Companies and Retail Giants Form an "Anti-Amazon Coalition"

In AI Shopping Wars, Rivals Team Up to Take On Amazon — The Information

AI firms are promoting shopping as a new area of growth for chatbots, and retail giants and payments companies don't want to be left out. That's spawned a web of partnerships among companies that could make money off AI-fueled purchases.

AI firms are promoting shopping as a new area of growth for chatbots, and retail giants and payments companies don't want to be left out. That's spawned a web of partnerships among companies that could make money off AI-fueled purchases.

引用元：The Information

According to The Information, as AI companies promote shopping as a new growth area for chatbots, retail giants and payment companies are rushing to join in, creating an expanding web of partnerships among companies poised to profit from AI-powered purchases. The article maps partnership relationships among at least 10 companies including OpenAI, Shopify, Stripe, PayPal, Walmart, Target, Etsy, Google, and Microsoft.

Background and Industry Trends

The AI shopping wars began in November 2024 when Perplexity launched its AI shopping agent. Amazon responded with legal action and defensive measures to block external AI agents from scraping its site. At stake is Amazon's $56 billion annual advertising business. If AI agents take control of product recommendations, Amazon's search advertising model could be fundamentally undermined.

In September 2025, OpenAI added "Instant Checkout" to ChatGPT. Shopify provided product data, and Stripe co-developed the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open standard that enables product discovery through checkout to be completed entirely within the chat interface. Stripe's "Shared Payment Token (SPT)" technology allows secure transactions without exposing buyers' payment information externally.

Key Players' Strategies and Alliance Map

OpenAI Camp: Built on ChatGPT (800 million weekly active users), partnering with Shopify (over 1 million merchants), Stripe (payment infrastructure), and Etsy (early partner). Also secured partnerships with Target, Instacart, and DoorDash. By open-sourcing ACP, they aim to expand the ecosystem.

Microsoft Camp: Announced "Copilot Checkout" at the January 2026 NRF (National Retail Federation) conference. Achieved integration with Shopify, PayPal, Stripe, and Etsy, leveraging existing enterprise relationships to differentiate from OpenAI, Google, and Amazon.

Walmart Camp: Beyond its own AI assistant "Sparky," Walmart has partnered with Google's Gemini. Their "everywhere" strategy displays Walmart products directly within AI conversations, deploying an open model in contrast to Amazon's closed approach.

Amazon (Defense): Chose to keep its AI assistant "Rufus" confined within the Amazon app. Rufus users have a 60% higher purchase rate, contributing an estimated $10 billion+ in annual revenue. The "Buy For Me" feature further strengthens user lock-in by enabling purchases of competing brands' products within the Amazon app.

Challenges and the Reality Gap

However, challenges remain for AI shopping adoption. According to Modern Retail, shopping-related queries still account for only about 2% of all ChatGPT queries. OpenAI's Instant Checkout rollout to 1 million stores has been delayed due to insufficient product data preparation. Amazon's Rufus has also faced criticism, with 83% of its recommendations favoring Amazon's own products and accuracy at just 32%.

Analyst Sucharita Kodali noted that "as long as Amazon is an e-commerce player, it will be difficult for ChatGPT to take the Buy Box from Amazon," highlighting that the barriers of consumer trust, stored payment information, and purchasing habits remain formidable.

Impact and Action Items for E-Commerce Businesses

Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2030, approximately 50% of US consumers will use AI agents for shopping, increasing e-commerce spending by $115 billion. With this trend in mind, here are three key considerations for e-commerce businesses.

1. AI-Ready Product Data: Businesses using Shopify should urgently structure their product data (pricing, inventory, images, variants) in formats that AI can understand. ACP compliance through Shopify reportedly requires just "one line of code."

2. Multi-Platform Strategy: Ensuring products are discoverable across multiple AI channels including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini is critical. A distributed approach that avoids dependence on any single platform helps diversify risk and maximize customer touchpoints.

3. Customer Experience Differentiation: In an era where AI agents automate price comparison, brand story, reviews, and unique services become key differentiators beyond price alone. Building brand-specific AI experiences, as Ralph Lauren has done with its AI styling bot, is one viable option.

Conclusion

The AI shopping wars are not merely a technology competition but a structural battle over which AI will be the first to mediate consumer purchasing decisions. The OpenAI-Shopify-Stripe alliance, the Microsoft-PayPal alliance, and the Walmart-Google alliance are forming an "anti-Amazon coalition," while Amazon counters by strengthening AI experiences within its own ecosystem. For e-commerce businesses, building a flexible infrastructure that can work with any camp will be the key to competitiveness from 2026 onward.