As consumers increasingly outsource purchasing decisions to machines, a new generation of startups is racing to build the infrastructure behind agentic commerce.

For more than two decades, the internet economy has revolved around one core behaviour: humans searching. Consumers searched Google for answers. They searched Amazon for products. They scrolled social platforms for inspiration and comparison before eventually making purchasing decisions themselves. Entire industries were built around optimising that process. Search engine optimisation became a multi billion dollar market. Retail media exploded. Performance marketing budgets surged. Ecommerce platforms competed to create faster, more frictionless shopping journeys. But the rise of generative AI may fundamentally disrupt the model that powered the modern internet. Increasingly, consumers are no longer just using AI to support decisions. They are beginning to delegate decisions to AI altogether.

This emerging category, known as “agentic commerce,” refers to autonomous systems capable of researching, evaluating, recommending and eventually purchasing products on behalf of consumers. While still early, many technology leaders believe it could become one of the largest structural shifts in digital commerce since the rise of mobile shopping. According to Salesforce research, nearly 40% of consumers already say they would be comfortable allowing AI agents to make routine purchases on their behalf. Gartner estimates that by 2030, autonomous AI systems could influence the majority of digital commerce interactions globally. Meanwhile, analysts project AI enabled commerce could represent trillions of dollars in retail value over the next decade. The implications are significant.

    Historically, brands competed for human attention. Success depended on visibility across search engines, marketplaces and social feeds. But AI systems do not behave like consumers. They do not browse emotionally, respond to advertising in the same way or spend time navigating digital storefronts. Instead, intelligent systems optimise for trust, relevance, data quality and confidence. In an AI mediated ecosystem, the competitive battleground may shift away from visibility and toward recommendation. That transition is already reshaping how some founders and investors think about the future of commerce infrastructure. Among them is Thomas Ford, a serial entrepreneur whose previous venture, Found.ee, scaled globally before being acquired by Downtown Music Holdings. Ford believes the industry is still underestimating how profound the transition toward agentic commerce may become.

    “The internet was designed around humans making decisions,” Ford says. “We are now entering a world where machines increasingly make those decisions on behalf of humans. That changes the economics of commerce entirely.” Ford is now preparing to launch Nudge, a London based startup positioning itself as an “AI decision layer” for modern commerce businesses. The company’s central thesis is that while organisations today have access to more data than ever before, most remain overwhelmed by fragmented systems, disconnected reporting and increasingly complex retail ecosystems. Marketplace performance, advertising data, inventory signals and consumer insights are often spread across multiple platforms, slowing commercial decision making precisely as AI driven behaviour accelerates.


    Nudge aims to address that problem through an AI commerce co-pilot known as “Nelly,” designed to help brands identify growth opportunities, prioritise actions and automate elements of execution across Amazon, Shopify and social commerce environments. Rather than focusing purely on reporting historical performance, the platform is designed around recommendation and orchestration. Which products are losing visibility. Which retail signals matter most. Which competitors are gaining share. Which actions should happen next. The distinction reflects a broader shift occurring across the technology sector.

      For years, ecommerce technology primarily focused on measurement. The next phase of AI driven commerce is increasingly focused on autonomous decision making. That evolution is already influencing the strategies of some of the world’s largest technology companies. Amazon has expanded AI powered shopping experiences through Rufus and Alexa+. Google is integrating generative AI directly into search and discovery. Shopify is embedding AI tools throughout merchant workflows. OpenAI, Meta and Apple are all investing heavily in intelligent assistants capable of increasingly personalised recommendation behaviour. Taken together, many analysts believe these developments point toward a future where traditional browsing behaviour declines significantly. That could create both risks and opportunities for brands. Large incumbents have historically benefited from scale advantages across advertising, shelf space and consumer awareness. But in an AI mediated environment, recommendation systems may reward structured data, contextual relevance and interoperability more heavily than pure marketing spend. For challenger brands, that may help level the competitive landscape. “The brands that succeed in agentic commerce may not necessarily be the biggest brands,” Ford says. “They may simply be the brands machines understand best.” As AI systems move closer to the centre of consumer purchasing behaviour, the next era of commerce may no longer be defined by who captures the most attention. It may be defined by who earns the recommendation.