AI Shopping Platforms Will Account for Just 1.5 Percent of Retail Ecommerce in 2026 — But That Is Already Four Times Last Year

eMarketer forecasts that AI shopping platforms — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and their competitors — will account for 1.5 percent of total US retail ecommerce sales in 2026. That translates to roughly $20.9 billion. It is a small number. It is also nearly four times the 2025 figure. And McKinsey projects the global agentic commerce opportunity at $3 to $5 trillion by 2030, with up to $1 trillion in US B2C retail alone.

The forecast, first published in eMarketer's December 2025 year-end outlook and reiterated in its April 8 AI commerce FAQ, sits at the center of a paradox: AI shopping is simultaneously tiny and the fastest-growing channel in retail.

The 1.5 percent that matters

Against total US retail ecommerce, $20.9 billion looks modest. Against 2025 figures, it is a fourfold jump in twelve months. Adobe Analytics measured a 670 percent increase in AI-referred traffic to US retail sites during the first month of the 2025 holiday season. Shoppers who clicked through to retail sites from AI platforms were 30 times more likely to complete a purchase than average visitors, according to Adobe data cited by eMarketer.

The disconnect is between traffic and transaction. AI drives high-intent consumers to retailer sites at record rates, but the number of purchases completed inside AI platforms themselves remains small. eMarketer notes that more shoppers currently use retailers' own embedded AI assistants — Amazon's Rufus, Walmart's Sparky — than external standalone AI platforms. Embedded AI is winning the commerce layer. Standalone AI is winning the discovery layer.

What retailers are doing about it

Amazon added an "Auto Buy" button to its Rufus assistant in early 2026. Consumers set a target price or discount threshold, and Rufus executes the purchase automatically when the condition is met. It is the most aggressive consumer-facing AI checkout move any major retailer has made — and it keeps the entire transaction inside Amazon's walls.

OpenAI's Instant Checkout, launched in September 2025 with Shopify, Etsy, Walmart, and Target, was officially retired on March 24, 2026. OpenAI cited insufficient flexibility and pivoted ChatGPT to product discovery only. Near-zero conversion rates and the absence of a sales tax collection system had exposed the distance between AI infrastructure and commerce infrastructure.

Perplexity continues to develop its agentic shopping tool, which identifies purchase intent and personalizes recommendations from search history. Scale remains limited.

The $72 billion reason retailers resist

US retail media spending will reach $71.98 billion in 2026, up 18.7 percent year-over-year, according to eMarketer's March forecast. That figure explains the entire architecture of retailer resistance to external AI agents.

Retail media revenue depends on consumers searching inside the retailer's own site. Sponsored product placements, display ads, and keyword campaigns all attach to that search behavior. When an AI agent handles discovery externally — in ChatGPT or Perplexity — and routes the consumer directly to a product page, the retailer loses the ad impression that funds the business. eMarketer states the mechanism plainly: AI agents that bypass traditional search "reduce the value of sponsored product placements, display ads, and keyword advertising."

Deloitte's 2026 retail survey found 81 percent of executives believe generative AI will weaken brand loyalty by 2027. Shopify and Amazon are now restricting external AI agent access to checkout. Walmart blocks agent-initiated transactions. The industry is building walls while the traffic grows 670 percent.

Mubboo's Take

The 1.5 percent figure tells us where we are. The 4x growth rate tells us where we are going. Platforms that build editorial authority now — while AI shopping is at 1.5 percent — will be the ones AI agents cite when that number reaches 5, 10, or 15 percent. Every page published today is content infrastructure for a market growing 4x annually. At Mubboo, we build content that works with AI agents across US shopping coverage and Australian shopping coverage because our revenue comes from helping consumers decide, not from selling sponsored search placements.