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TODAY’S MAZE
Happy Thursday! Walmart is quickly narrowing the digital distance with Amazon by turning its physical stores into an online powerhouse. A new deal with Google’s Gemini is helping the retailer win the race for automated shopping.
As AI agents begin to handle routine purchases, the focus shifts from search bars to recommendation engines. Can Amazon maintain its lead when shoppers hand the wheel to automated assistants?
In today’s MarketMaze focus:
Walmart gains online ground
New tariffs hit chips
Amazon squeezes seller margins
Chrome blocks AI agents
Global ecommerce growth slows
+Handpicked recent news you need to know
LET’S ENTER THE MAZE!
- Artur Stańczuk, MarketMaze Founder
MAZE STORY
The Maze: Walmart is leveraging a deep partnership with agentic shopping to challenge Amazon's digital dominance. Recent data shows the retail giant is successfully converting its physical footprint into rapid online growth.
Walmart’s online sales now represent roughly one-fifth of its total U.S. revenue, outstripping Amazon’s digital growth rate as its marketplace share remains below 10% overall.
Google’s Gemini platform creates a unified shopping journey by linking customer profiles directly to AI chat sessions, which enables automating routine purchases like household cleaners.
Analysts estimate that agentic sales will contribute an additional $115 billion to total U.S. eCommerce spending by 2030 as shoppers hand the wheel to automated assistants.
Why it matters: While Amazon still captures over 50% of U.S. digital spending, Walmart is winning the battle for routine commerce by blending physical stores with agent-led convenience. This shift forces brands to optimize for AI recommendation engines rather than just search bars.
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MAZE STORY
The Maze: President Trump is imposing a 25% tariff on high-end computing chips which makes returning tech manufacturing to the US a primary economic priority. This policy targets specific hardware like the Nvidia H200 that powers modern AI services and data centers.
The administration invoked Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to restrict high-end imports that the White House determines pose a potential security risk to the country’s strategic tech infrastructure.
Officials signaled that they may soon expand these trade barriers to include the AMD MI325X along with a broader variety of semiconductors or specialized manufacturing equipment used in data centers.
Previous negotiations suggest the administration allows selling advanced chips to China only if the government receives a significant revenue cut from the proceeds of those international transactions.
Why it matters: Increased hardware costs will likely raise prices for cloud-based AI tools that ecommerce teams rely on for personalization and automation. Businesses should anticipate higher overhead for data-heavy operations as the administration uses tariffs to leverage domestic investment.
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MAZE STORY
The Maze: Amazon reportedly demands up to 30% discounts from suppliers and plans to eliminate return safeguards for expensive items on February 8. The moves signal a push to reclaim profits as international trade pressures mount.
The updated policy removes the high-value exemption for the Prepaid Return Label program, which previously allowed sellers to troubleshoot issues before a return was initiated.
Expert Vanessa Hung notes that brands may need to implement margin buffers or increase prices by 10% to account for the risk of damaged returns on expensive goods.
Negotiations for these discounts are accelerating as the industry awaits a Supreme Court decision regarding the legality of current trade duties.
Why it matters: Amazon is shifting the financial burden of logistics and geopolitical trade risks directly onto the balance sheets of its partners. These policy changes force sellers to choose between absorbing lower margins, raising prices for consumers, or migrating premium selection to other marketplaces.
DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Agentic AI hit a distribution wall. Browsers should be the natural home for AI assistants, but Chrome controls the door. Features do not beat defaults.
In late 2025, Chrome handled about 73% of global internet traffic, with Safari at 13% and every other browser below 5%, leaving little oxygen for challengers.
User behavior favors preinstalled tools, making even superior AI browsers struggle without platform-level partnerships.
Most AI agents are now launching as apps or extensions, not standalone browsers, to avoid the adoption cliff.
Why it matters: Control of the interface controls commerce. AI shopping will grow, but mostly inside existing ecosystems. Ecommerce winners will optimize for agents living on top of today’s dominant platforms.
DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Ecommerce is big, stable, and harder to win. Shopper counts and sales keep rising, but the easy growth era is over. Share now comes from taking it, not waiting for it.
By 2025, global ecommerce reached roughly $6.4T with 2.77B shoppers, but growth slowed to single digits in mature markets like the US.
The US hit about $1.47T in online retail sales in 2025, growing faster than total retail but far below pandemic-era surges.
Market power concentrates as platforms tax traffic, ads, fulfillment, and software simultaneously.
Why it matters: Growth is now strategic, not automatic. Ecommerce brands must fight on efficiency, loyalty, and differentiation. The toll roads matter more than the highway size.
BRIEFING
🏬 Everything else in Ecommerce & Big Tech
🇺🇸 Donald Trump proposed a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates to combat inflation, a move that could significantly alter consumer purchasing power.
🇺🇸 Walmart expanded its drone delivery partnership with Wing to 150 more locations, targeting high-speed last-mile fulfillment in major urban areas.
🌍 eBay announced final value fee increases for sellers in the UK and Germany, further squeezing margins for cross-border merchants.
🇺🇸 California AG launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s xAI after Grok was used to generate nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfake images.
🌍 Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open-source standard designed to allow AI agents to facilitate direct transactions.
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MarketMaze team
