Opinion
Forget B2C. The future is B2A
"The future of commerce will be shaped by those who understand that AI agents are not merely here to help. They are here to detect, decide, and deliver independently and frictionlessly," writes Lanor Daniel, Founder and CEO of ShopperAI.
For the past two decades, the world of commerce has centered around a single human action: “add to cart.” Every platform, innovation, and marketing funnel was designed to optimize that exact moment. However, within the boardrooms of Silicon Valley and the operational centers of Fortune 500 retailers, a new consensus is emerging. The era of the human shopper is gradually coming to an end, and the future clearly belongs to agents who are autonomous, intelligent, and continuously active.
Welcome to the Age of Agentic Commerce
Agentic commerce is not a futuristic concept. It is already transforming markets worth trillions of dollars. AI assistants are now purchasing groceries, refilling office supplies, and optimizing supply chains. They are doing this not only for consumers but also for businesses and machines. When OpenAI, Amazon, and Walmart each place agentic AI at the core of their strategies, it becomes clear that the rules of the game have fundamentally changed.
Walmart has announced that more than 50 percent of its online revenue is expected to come from AI agents within five years, according to Reuters (2025). Gartner estimates that by 2030, machine customers will drive $30 trillion in global spending. Statista reports that e-commerce now accounts for 20.1 percent of global retail, with agent-led transactions representing the fastest-growing category.
These are not simply impressive headlines. Rather, they are signs of a deep and lasting paradigm shift.
Every major evolution in commerce has been shaped by a hidden bottleneck. In the 1990s, it was digital payments. In the 2000s, it was logistics. The 2010s brought a focus on cloud computing and data infrastructure. Today, the most critical challenge is inventory accuracy. AI agents, no matter how advanced, cannot compensate for the lack of real-time and precise knowledge of what is truly available on store shelves.
The initial wave of agentic commerce pilots failed during the most decisive step, which is the checkout. The reason was that the agent's intent to buy collided with unreliable data. Inventory APIs were often outdated, incorrect, or completely unavailable. This led to abandoned transactions, lost sales, and broken trust.
As I often say, agentic commerce does not fail during the prompt. It fails at the shelf.
Moving Beyond Dashboards and Toward Execution
Today’s market is overflowing with dashboards, predictive analytics, and insight engines. However, as Andreessen Horowitz recently noted, the real leap forward will happen when agents stop acting like assistants and start functioning as operators who execute end-to-end decisions autonomously. Sequoia describes this as “closing the loop.” Lightspeed and Accel now speak about “execution moats” and “full-stack agentic platforms.”
The companies that will lead in this new era will not necessarily have the most attractive user interfaces. Instead, they will succeed in building a seamless bridge between digital decision-making and physical execution. This is what creates a true last-mile brain for commerce.
Traditional commerce relied heavily on metrics like clicks, carts, and conversions. In contrast, agentic commerce introduces a new set of operational measurements:
- Agentic Fill Rate: What percentage of transactions initiated by agents are completed autonomously, from start to finish?
- Agent Share of Checkout: How many of the total checkouts are completed by agents rather than humans?
- Last-Mile Inventory Score (LMI): How accurate and reliable is the shelf-level inventory data at each location, in real time?
Investors are no longer impressed by visually appealing dashboards or conversational chatbots. What they demand now is performance that matches real-world outcomes. The central question is shifting from “Can you analyze?” to “Can you execute consistently and at scale with certainty?”
Each wave of retail innovation has rewarded those who built foundational infrastructure. Shopify enabled millions of merchants with a simple payments API. Stripe laid the groundwork for seamless online transactions. Instacart and DoorDash connected gig workers with physical inventory, though they still relied heavily on human intervention.
Agentic commerce requires a different kind of infrastructure. The next generation of unicorns will eliminate human friction entirely by addressing the shelf reality gap with always-on, real-time operational data that is fully accessible through APIs.
A Personal Perspective: Dashboards Are No Longer Enough
Over the years, I have seen companies chase insights, refine dashboards, and strive to appear “data-driven.” However, analytics has become a commodity. Execution, on the other hand, is what creates true competitive advantage. What excites me today is not another report or visualization. It is the sound of shelves being restocked in real time, the hum of robots fulfilling orders, and the quiet precision of agents that take action without delay or hesitation.
Executives and investors who are looking for the next big thing should stop asking who has the best predictions. Instead, they should ask who can close the loop in the physical world and do so at a massive scale.
The future of commerce will be shaped by those who understand that AI agents are not merely here to help. They are here to detect, decide, and deliver independently and frictionlessly.
Right now, the agentic execution layer remains open territory. Investors who are ready to look beyond dashboards and focus on bridging AI and the shelf will be the ones who shape the next generation of global commerce giants.
Lanor Daniel is the Founder and CEO of ShopperAI.
