AI Agents Are Learning to Buy. The Brands Haven’t Said a Word.
Google published an open standard for AI agents to buy from retailers. The card networks, platforms and biggest retailers have written agentic commerce into their SEC filings. Twelve of the largest packaged-goods makers haven’t used the word once. When an agent shops, the pack and the ad go unseen.
A shopper tells an AI assistant to reorder paper towels under $25. The assistant searches, compares, picks a brand and pays. Nobody walks an aisle, sees an end cap or scrolls past an ad. The industry has started calling this agentic commerce: AI agents that find, choose and pay for things on someone's behalf. It is early. The companies that sit between brands and shoppers are already writing it into their plans. The brands mostly aren't.
The decision that set the terms
In January 2026, Google announced the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open-source standard for how AI agents talk to retailers' systems. The choice is worth reading as a decision. Google could have built a closed checkout inside its own assistant. It published a shared standard instead, so any agent can transact with any retailer that adopts it.
The rest of the plumbing moved the same month. Commercetools launched a product that connects an existing commerce system to ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot without rebuilding it. In China, Alibaba's Qwen assistant already lets people complete purchases inside the chat, paid through Alipay's AI payment service.
Who has written it down
Public companies tell investors what they think will matter, in filings they can be held to. So the useful question is who has put "agentic commerce" in one, and who hasn't.
Between January 2024 and September 26, 2026, 141 annual, quarterly and current reports filed with the SEC used the phrase, from 41 companies. The first was the advertising holding company Interpublic, in April 2025. Then the money moved in: American Express, PayPal and Bread Financial in July 2025, Mastercard and Visa that autumn, Capital One and Synchrony in early 2026. The platforms followed: Shopify, Etsy, Klaviyo, Criteo. So did retailers: Ulta Beauty, Macy's, Kohl's, Revolve.
Large US-listed packaged food, drink and household companies that used the word "agentic" in any annual, quarterly or current report from January 2025 to September 26, 2026: Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Hershey, Colgate-Palmolive, Clorox, Kimberly-Clark, Conagra and Campbell's. Walmart and Amazon each used it in eight filings over the same period.
| Layer | Who | What they did |
|---|---|---|
| The standard | Published an open protocol for agent checkout, January 2026 | |
| The money | American Express, PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, card lenders | Named agentic commerce in SEC filings from July 2025 |
| The platforms | Shopify, Etsy, Klaviyo, Criteo, commercetools | Named it in filings, or shipped connectors to AI assistants |
| The shelf | Walmart, Amazon; Ulta, Macy's, Kohl's | Use "agentic" in filings (8 each for Walmart and Amazon) |
| The brands | Twelve large packaged-goods makers | No filing uses the word |
Sources: Wikipedia, "Agentic commerce," retrieved September 26, 2026 (Google's protocol, commercetools, Alibaba and Alipay); SEC EDGAR full-text search, September 26, 2026 (every filing count). A filing that names a term shows it is on the company's mind, not what it plans to do.
Why the silence matters to a brand
Every layer in that map sits between a brand and its shopper, and every one of them has told investors it is preparing. When a person shops, a brand can win with a pack, a price point, a shelf position or an ad. When an agent shops, it works from whatever the retailer and the protocol hand it: the product's attributes, price, ratings and availability, in a form a machine can read. The things brands spend most of their money on are the things an agent doesn't see.
The purchases agents suit first are the ones packaged goods depend on. Recurring buys, subscriptions and restocking are predictable and standardized, which is exactly where delegating to software is easiest. That describes a large part of a grocery basket.
The first company to write it down
April 2025The first filing to use "agentic commerce" came from Interpublic, an advertising holding company, in April 2025, before any card network, platform or retailer. The companies that sell brands their marketing saw the shift first. The brands they sell to have not put it in a filing since.
If the agency world is preparing for an agent buyer and the brand is not, the brand will be sold a solution before it has decided what the problem is.
What this is not evidence of
A filing is not a strategy. Brand owners may well be working on this without writing about it, and a phrase in a card lender's quarterly report can be one line in a list of risks. The counts show where the subject has reached the level of investor disclosure, not how much anyone is spending. Agentic commerce is also small today. Nobody outside the companies involved knows how much buying agents actually do.
What the filings do show is order. The standard, the payment networks, the platforms and the largest retailers moved first. The brands whose products get chosen are last, and so far silent.
- You sell through the retailers that are preparing. Walmart, Amazon or the others in the map carry a large share of your volume.
- Your product is bought on repeat. Staples, refills and subscriptions are where agents start.
- Your difference lives in the pack or the ad. If a shopper picks you for reasons that don't show up in your product data, an agent won't find those reasons.
- Not yours if your sales run through channels no agent reaches, like foodservice or specialty stores that don't sell online. Watch it; don't spend on it yet.
Ask an AI agent to buy your category, twenty times, and write down what it picks and why.
Use the shopping features of the assistants your buyers use. Ask for your category the way a busy shopper would ("reorder dish soap under $10", "a snack for my kid's lunchbox, no peanuts"), then the same request worded differently, because assistants' answers change with the wording. For each answer, note the brand, the retailer and the reason given. Then look at what your product listing actually tells a machine: attributes, claims, sizes, ratings.
- What it costs
- One afternoon, and the discomfort of seeing your brand described by its product data alone.
- How you'll know
- If your brand is rarely picked, or only picked on price, the work is your product data and your retailer listings, not your advertising. Run it again next quarter and see whether it moves.
Make a call: how many of those twelve brand owners will name agentic commerce in a filing by mid-2027? Cast your vote, free, settled by the same public search.
Related from Sound Decisions: Change the Question, Change the Ranking · Coke Built It. Pepsi Bought It. · Getting Into Walmart Is the Dream
Is an agent choosing against you? Get a read on it.
A sourced, dated read of your category: which retailers and platforms are preparing, what your product data tells a machine, and what a competitor's says. Ask, and I'll run one.
Request a read