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TODAY’S MAZE
Happy Tuesday! Agentic commerce is forcing a choice the industry has quietly avoided for years: collaborate or control. Most of ecommerce has picked the first option. Amazon has not.
Ben Thompson’s “Anti-Amazon Alliance” quote from 2019 feels sharper in 2026. Google, Shopify, Walmart, Etsy, and others are building together. Amazon is experimenting alone, even as trust and interoperability become the real currencies of AI-driven shopping.
In today’s MarketMaze focus:
Everyone but Amazon in agentic commerce
The rise of megamanagers and burnout risk
AI becomes the shopping aisle
How AI finally ties to cash flow
Checkout moves inside agents
+Handpicked recent news you need to know
LET’S ENTER THE MAZE!
- Artur Stańczuk, MarketMaze Founder
MAZE STORY
The Maze: Agentic commerce has exposed a quiet consensus across ecommerce: build together, not alone. Platforms, retailers, and payment players are aligning on shared rails, while Amazon experiments in isolation, testing shortcuts that clash with where the industry is heading.
Ben Thompson’s “Anti Amazon Alliance” quote from 2019 feels sharper in 2026, as Google, Shopify, Walmart, Etsy and others announce joint work on agent ready commerce while Amazon stands apart from the collaboration wave.
Amazon’s Buy for Me prototype surfaced products from independent stores without consent, creating friction just as the rest of the market is investing in permission based integrations and shared standards.
Dara Khosrowshahi’s (CEO of Uber) long game logic matters here: charge 0% early, optimize the experience, then renegotiate, because ten year relevance is not decided by year one take rates.
Why it matters: Agentic commerce rewards ecosystems that feel safe, open, and easy to plug into. If Amazon keeps optimizing control while others optimize collaboration, it risks becoming the most powerful player sitting outside the system shaping the future of ecommerce.
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MAZE STORY
The Maze: Companies flattened org charts to move faster and cut costs. The result is fewer managers with much bigger teams, turning leadership into a scale problem where coaching time shrinks and burnout risk rises.
In 2025, the average manager oversaw 12.1 people, up from 10.9 in 2024 and 8.2 in 2013, while the median stayed near 5–6, meaning the jump is driven by a growing minority running very large teams.
13% of managers now lead 25+ direct reports, and 97% also do individual contributor work, a recipe for transactional management where meetings focus on urgency, not development or strategy.
After layoffs at firms like Amazon and Meta, leaders pushed flatter structures; in Sept 2024, Andy Jassy told teams to raise the IC-to-manager ratio by 15% by Q1 2025, betting speed would beat hierarchy.
Why it matters: Bigger teams are not automatically bad, but leadership does not scale without redesign. In e-commerce and tech, where speed and execution matter, megamanagers win only if companies strip away non-leadership work and protect time for real coaching.
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MAZE STORY
The Maze: Retail hit an inflection point at NRF 2026. AI is no longer a backend tool. It is becoming the front door to shopping, from discovery to checkout, but leaders kept repeating one warning: technology only works if it improves service, trust, and conversion.
At NRF 2026 in New York (Jan 11–13), 5,000+ brands heard CEOs like John Furner (Walmart) and Sundar Pichai (Google) frame AI as a growth lever, while demos ranged from humanoid greeters to AI drive-thru menus that promise higher basket size and faster decisions.
Google positioned Gemini as a shopping surface, letting users browse and buy products from Walmart and others inside the chatbot, optionally linking loyalty accounts so recommendations reflect real carts, preferences, and past behavior, not generic prompts.
Ralph Lauren showed the practical side with “Ask Ralph,” a Microsoft-powered styling assistant that mimics a store associate, signaling how brands want AI to extend premium service digitally, not replace it.
Why it matters: E-commerce is shifting from search pages to conversations. If AI becomes the aisle, retailers must decide whether they own the shopper relationship or rent it from platforms, because whoever controls the interface controls margin, data, and loyalty.
DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Wall Street asked AI to prove it can make money, not demos. Alphabet answered fast by pushing Gemini into Siri and shopping, turning AI from a cost center into distribution and transactions investors can model.
January 2026 marked a turning point as Alphabet briefly crossed $4T market cap, becoming Big Tech’s top performer after a year of antitrust fear faded and AI partnerships shifted the narrative from risk to execution.
Apple chose Gemini to power parts of Siri under a multi year deal, signaling frontier models are now rented like cloud capacity, while Google gains default placement inside a habit forming interface used daily by hundreds of millions.
Walmart embedded Gemini into shopping, letting users discover items, build carts, and buy inside chat, showing how AI can lift conversion and cut costs at once, the combo Wall Street rewards most.
Why it matters: This is the shortest path from AI to earnings. In e-commerce, assistants that route intent straight to checkout will reshape search, marketplaces, and who controls the last click.
DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Shopping agents are no longer just helping people browse. They are moving into checkout, influencing trust, and reshaping how content gets created and found. This piece connects consumer behavior, search evolution, and content supply into one shift.
Shopping agents move from product discovery to in chat buying, with autonomy accelerating toward agent to agent transactions
Younger users lead AI shopping adoption, but older cohorts show fast catch up in trust and usage
AI written content crosses the 50% mark in 2025, reshaping what AI systems read, rank, and recommend
Why it matters: Commerce is being intermediated twice. First by AI agents that choose. Then by AI content that feeds those agents. Brands that do not adapt lose visibility, trust, and ultimately demand.
BRIEFING
🏬 Everything else in Ecommerce & Big Tech
🌍 Amazon targets streaming ad dominance by leveraging its Marketing Cloud and first-party viewer data to turn Prime Video ads into shoppable invitations.
🇺🇸 The Home Depot launched new agentic AI tools with Google Cloud that provide conversational project expertise and localized store wayfinding for DIYers and pros.
🇫🇷 Shein appealed a French government request to block its website, following a court ruling that deemed a total suspension "disproportionate."
🇺🇸 Spangle AI secured $15 million in funding to scale its infrastructure that creates "agentic" commerce layers connecting AI discovery to real-time conversions.
🌍 Anthropic launched Claude Cowork, a new agentic tool for non-programmers that was built in under two weeks using its own AI coding tools.
🇺🇸 JPMorgan Chase warned that a proposed 10% cap on credit card interest could harm consumers by forcing banks to restrict lending to those who need it most.
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MarketMaze team
