Global retail enters 2026 facing a structural shift poised to reshape both the consumer journey and companies' internal operations: AI Commerce, or, simply put, artificial intelligence-driven digital commerce. As explained by Thiago Muniz, CEO of Receita Previsível, an expert in conversion and sales and a professor at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), “the term encompasses all Artificial Intelligence applications dedicated to purchasing, sales, customer experience, logistics, marketing, pricing, and inventory management, creating a more efficient, personalized, and predictive commercial chain.”.
According to data According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), global AI spending is projected to reach $632 billion by 2028, maintaining a robust expansion pace. In Brazil, its use is already a reality: 52% of Brazilians used ChatGPT or other AI assistants to aid in purchases between 2024 and 2025, and 74% stated that the technology influenced their product choices, according to the Report Retail 2025 report by Adyen.
AI as the central infrastructure of retail
For Kenneth Corrêa, MBA professor at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) and author of the book book “Cognitive Organizations: Leveraging the Power of Generative AI and Intelligent Agents,” “it is necessary to separate the past from the future: Classical AI has been making inventory and price forecasts for major retailers for years. The 2025 revolution has been driven by Generative AI and Intelligent Agent Networks. We are no longer just talking about predicting demand, but about autonomous agents that research prices, create personalized campaigns in real-time, and execute service and sales without human intervention. Retail ceases to be merely digital to become a Cognitive Organization, where intelligence is not just support, but the operational agent that instantly connects customer intent to delivery logistics.”
This shift is reflected in the advancement of technologies such as intelligent purchasing agents, capable of understanding preferences and context; highly personalized recommendation systems based on actual consumer behavior; dynamic pricing models supported by margin and demand forecasts; logistics automation connecting distribution centers, stores, and consumers; and AI-driven marketing strategies capable of anticipating interests even before the click.
In retail, sales predictability and operational efficiency are increasingly decisive points, as Thiago Muniz highlights. “AI is especially transforming B2B retail and B2C with a B2B logic: a more consultative journey, advanced data analysis, and commercial automation. For retailers, mastering relationship and sales predictive analytics will become increasingly fundamental to achieve more predictable cycles and healthier margins.”
Technology choice based on data: a new corporate behavior
The adoption of AI by retailers themselves is also transforming how companies structure their operations and choose technologies to support the business. Software solutions, once seen merely as support tools, are now taking on a strategic role in an increasingly data-driven environment.
“The most significant impact of AI Commerce will be on the quality of decision-making. We already observe companies selecting platforms and reorganizing processes based on information generated by AI, such as usage metrics and analyses of spending on tools that overlap in operations, causing losses. All of this with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence. This movement has led the sector to adopt more analytical and integrated approaches in choosing and managing their technologies,” explains Fernando Neto, COO of the B2B software search and evaluation platform Stack.
This movement reinforces that AI Commerce is not limited to the end consumer and also encompasses internal strategic decisions.
Security, marketing, and search in AI Commerce
With a high volume of data circulating between recommendation, inventory, checkout, logistics, and CRM systems, security begins to play a structuring role within this transformation. Despite the advancement of e-commerce in recent years, consumer insecurity remains a major challenge for the sector. A prep study released by Serasa Experian shows that, although most Brazilians shop online regularly, 48.1% of respondents reported having abandoned an order due to a lack of trust in the website or app — revealing consumer insecurity regarding digital safety.
“With more data, more integration, and more automation, the risk surface also expands. The adoption of AI in retail requires attention to models, information flows, and critical processes, ensuring they operate with integrity and security,” explains cybersecurity expert, CEO and founder of Security First, Fernando Corrêa. “This movement involves practices such as audits of AI-based systems, continuous monitoring, and prevention measures focused on APIs, algorithms, and data environments.”.
Product search and discovery behavior is also undergoing a significant transformation driven by AI and new forms of digital navigation. Instead of actively searching for items, many consumers are adopting more passive journeys, based on the continuous flow of content recommended by platforms, social networks, and marketplaces.
“The same capability achieved by social media artificial intelligence is beginning to be present in marketplaces and online stores across various segments. With inventories of thousands of products available in real-time, there is an increasing need to individualize suggestions based on user interest and behavior. And this ‘TikTok model,’ this technology, needs to be looked at carefully, as it is what has been dictating the preferences of the digital buyer,” analyzes Thiago da Mata, CEO of Kwara, a marketplace specialized in selling goods, products, and assets.
This growing integration between data, automation, and digital behavior has required marketing professionals to review their practices and broaden their understanding of how consumers make decisions in environments increasingly mediated by algorithms.
Bruna Madaloni, CEO of Hay Hyve, a global full-service boutique agency, highlights: “The greatest impact of AI on marketing in 2026 will not only be in personalization, but in how it reorganizes human behavior within purchase journeys. We are moving away from a campaign-based model and entering an ecosystem where brands need to respond in real-time to people's emotions, motivations, and cultural contexts. AI expands our capacity to understand these signals, but demands maturity: every interaction needs to be relevant, ethical, and intentional. Technology alone does not build value; what builds it is the experience it enables. For brands that want to grow in the coming years, the focus will be less on producing more content and more on delivering clarity, consistency, and meaning to each customer, in any country, language, or platform.”.
The consolidation of AI Commerce also repositions the set of technologies, data, and automations that support marketing operations as a central layer of integration between communication, sales, and operations. In an environment of multiple touchpoints and real-time decisions, this ecosystem begins to connect different systems and interpret behavioral signals continuously.
“In AI Commerce, MarTech integrates data from marketing, sales, inventory, and service into unified analytical flows. AI models already support everything from dynamic segmentation to automatic adjustments of campaigns and offers, allowing decisions to keep pace with consumer behavior and retail dynamics,” states Lucas Monteiro, Martech Leader at Keyrus, an international consultancy specialized in Data Intelligence and Digital Transformation.
How AI Commerce will expand in 2026
Several vectors will drive the accelerated expansion of AI Commerce in the coming year:
- Consumers more comfortable with AI: the daily use of AI to discover products, compare prices, or request help in the purchase journey already exceeds half of the population in Brazil. This accelerates the acceptance of autonomous assistants, recommendations, and personalized experiences.
- Smarter supply chains: large networks and e-commerce platforms are migrating to machine learning-based demand forecasting models, reducing planning errors — one of retail's largest costs.
- More connected physical stores: the expansion of phygital accelerates in 2026: from smart fitting rooms to sales associates equipped with AI assistants that recommend products in real-time.
- Growth of operational automation: AI takes over repetitive tasks in logistics, customer service, registration, replenishment, and even campaign design, freeing up teams for strategic activities.
- Predictive marketing and total personalization: real-time offers, dynamic segmentation, and AI-generated campaigns gain strength as retailers connect behavioral, weather, inventory, and historical data.
- New monetization models: structured data and AI-generated insights open doors for financial products, personalized curation, and aggregated services integrated into the purchase journey.
The advancement of AI Commerce marks a new stage for retail, in which data, automation, and recommendation models begin to integrate more directly into different phases of the operation. The combination of maturing technologies, changes in purchasing behavior, and the pursuit of more structured processes tends to expand the use of AI throughout 2026, gradually becoming central elements of planning and management in the sector.
