Welcome to The AI Shift by Inc42, our all-new newsletter that delves deep into the world of artificial intelligence, LLMs, big tech giants and the major trends sweeping the Indian startup and tech ecosystem. Here’s the third edition; do send us your feedback and suggestions so we can improve as we go along!

Imagine strolling through a crowded market, comparing prices, and contemplating what to buy. If we break down this process, it comprises searching, weighing options, and a barrage of second guesses before loosening purse strings.

When commerce moved online, we tried to recreate the same behaviour with filters, reviews, comparison charts, and endless scrolling — much like hopping from one shop, or alley, to another.

The age of agentic commerce, however, proposes something completely different. Instead of helping you browse, it wants to act. You express intent once, and AI agents handle the rest — searching, comparing, deciding, and even transacting on your behalf.

As agentic commerce moves from experimentation to early deployment, we are faced with several questions. Who owns the customer if shopping becomes a background process? Who carries trust and liability? And who really benefits when decisions are delegated to machines?

Let’s ponder in this week’s edition of The AI Shift.

The Rise Of Agentic Commerce

Rahul Agarwalla, the managing partner at SenseAI Ventures, sees agentic commerce as the next step in how technology reduces friction over time — first, we searched, then we summoned, and now we delegate.

As he puts it, “Uber didn’t give you a list of cabs, it gave you the cab. It solved your problem precisely.”

Agentic commerce aims for a similar leap in buying. Once intent is expressed, everything else – price comparisons, address entry, and other friction – should fade.

In his view, advantage in this space is more likely to accrue to players with distribution, trust, and habit already on their side, rather than those with superior architecture alone.

“I would not invest in an agentic ecommerce play just because it’s really well architected and works really well,” Agarwalla said, noting that power in agentic commerce is likely to tilt towards large platforms rather than pure-play startups. Despite an uneven playing field, the latest Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) by Google and Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) by OpenAI remain open standards, allowing anyone to build and take advantage.

In a statement to Inc42, a Google spokesperson said, “We expect people will want to shop anywhere, and when they do choose to do so on Google, we want to make it as easy as possible.” The emphasis is on laying down key foundational building blocks with UCP.

The spokesperson added, “The Universal Commerce Protocol is designed to work with Agent2Agent (A2A), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), and Model Context Protocol (MCP), and will soon power checkout inside AI Mode on Search and the Gemini app.”

Google is explicit about boundaries. “With the UCP-powered checkout feature on Google, retailers maintain the customer relationships and remain the seller of record.”

Despite companies making the open standard with clear intentions, experts warn of various challenges. Ed Huang, the cofounder and CTO of TiDB, expects the agentic commerce ecosystem to look........

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