The evidence · what is changing today

Agentic Trends

Agentic commerce is not a forecast — it is already emerging. Three dashboards on shopping influence, the discovery shift, and adoption.

~900MChatGPT weekly users (Feb 2026)
+304%AI-driven retail referrals in 2025
~68%Google searches ending with zero clicks (2026)
-33%publisher search traffic, year to Nov 2025

Graph 1 · Share of shopping journeys using AI

Consumers using GenAI in the shopping journey.

Sources: Capital One Shopping; Stord, State of AI in E-Commerce 2026 (2026 figure is stated intent).

Graph 2 · The discovery shift

AI referrals vs traditional search, indexed to Jan 2025 = 100.

Sources: Euromonitor (AI referrals +304% in 2025); reporting on publisher search traffic -33% to Nov 2025; SparkToro (zero-click).

Graph 3 · AI adoption growth

Active users, 2023 to present. Shows the exponential adoption curve.

ChatGPT figures are weekly active users; Gemini, Perplexity and Claude are monthly actives. Best-available public estimates — Sources: OpenAI / Demandsage, Google, market trackers (Similarweb, FatJoe).

What the behaviour looks like

Two fronts are moving at once.

Consumer behaviour

  • Growth in ChatGPT usage
  • Growth in Perplexity
  • AI-assisted search
  • AI-generated recommendations
  • Shopping through AI assistants
  • Zero-click behaviour
  • Declining traditional search traffic

Enterprise behaviour

  • AI procurement agents
  • Customer service agents
  • Personal AI assistants

Gartner forecasts AI agents intermediating $15T of B2B purchasing by 2028 — the enterprise side is moving too.

In motion

Worth watching — commentary and demos from the field. We can't rehost LinkedIn/Substack video directly, so these link out to the source.

▶ Howard Yu — “Your Next Customer Is a Machine” (video essay) ▶ Gemini ordering coffee & managing a calendar by voice (LinkedIn) ▶ Byron Sharp on AI agents as a new distribution intermediary (LinkedIn) ▶ “My agent does it” — the CPG existential-threat take (LinkedIn)