Insights on AI-powered marketing, GEO optimization, and getting your brand recommended by AI assistants.
Five protocols. Four transports. Three payment layers. Two competing alliance blocs. And one question your board will ask before the year is out: can customers buy from us through an AI agent?
AI-originated orders on Shopify grew **15X between January 2025 and January 2026**. ChatGPT alone now serves over 900 million weekly users, many of whom are shopping directly inside the conversation. Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity are all adding embedded checkout. Shopify merchant
Ninety-two percent of global shoppers prefer websites that display prices in their local currency. That single statistic explains why cross-border commerce remains one of the highest-friction, highest-opportunity segments in retail. With global cross-border ecommerce sales projected to reach $1.2 tr
Agentic commerce has introduced an entirely new vocabulary to retail and e-commerce. Whether you are a merchant evaluating AI-driven sales channels, a developer integrating commerce protocols, or a strategist mapping the future of online retail, this glossary defines every term you need to understan
Nearly half of all consumers already use artificial intelligence somewhere in their buying journey. Shopping-related AI queries grew 4,700% between 2024 and 2025. And McKinsey projects that AI agents could redirect $3 to $5 trillion in global retail spending by the end of the decade.
TikTok Shop crossed **$130 billion in global GMV in 2025**, doubling its volume year over year. Instagram is testing AI-powered shopping overlays on influencer posts. Live commerce is on pace to become a trillion-dollar channel. And now, AI agents are entering social commerce -- not as passive recom
NRF 2026 -- Retail's Big Show -- took over the Javits Center in January with a single, unmistakable message: agentic commerce is no longer a concept deck. It is shipping code. Over the course of three days, Google open-sourced a new commerce protocol, Stripe and OpenAI launched a rival standard with
When an AI agent buys something on your behalf, who actually handles the payment? The agent cannot see your card number, cannot type a CVV into a checkout form, and cannot authenticate with your bank. Yet within the next twelve months, Visa predicts millions of consumers will use AI agents to comple
Your customers are asking AI to shop for them. Right now, someone in your target audience is typing "find me the best [your product category]" into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity. An AI agent is evaluating your brand against every competitor in seconds, deciding whether to recommend you or skip you
On August 2, 2026, the European Union's AI Act begins enforcing its high-risk AI system rules. For ecommerce businesses that sell to EU consumers, use AI-driven pricing, deploy recommendation engines, or operate autonomous purchasing agents, this is not a future concern. It is a compliance deadline
Your next customer might never visit your website. They will ask an AI assistant to find the right product, compare options, and complete the purchase -- all inside a conversation. The storefront is no longer a webpage. It is a protocol.
If you had to pick one country on Earth where agentic commerce -- AI agents that discover, negotiate, and complete purchases on behalf of consumers -- will reach mass adoption first, the answer is Brazil. Not the United States. Not China. Brazil.
Hexagon helps brands optimize for AI search engines and get recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Our blog covers Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), AI marketing strategies, and how to improve your brand's visibility in AI-powered search results.