Amazon CEO expects to ‘find ways’ to partner with third-party AI shopping agents in the future
Amazon expects to eventually partner with third-party AI shopping agents — even as the e-commerce giant continues to blocks shopping agents from scraping its site.
On Amazon’s earnings call Thursday, TD Cowen analyst John Blackledge asked how Amazon thinks about “agentic commerce” looking ahead and how the company plans to serve customers who use autonomous agents to make purchases. In response, CEO Andy Jassy said AI agents capable of buying goods on behalf of consumers could transform online shopping. As such, Amazon is also preparing for a future where shoppers rely on third-party agents built by other companies.
“We’re also having conversations with and expect, over time, to partner with third-party agents,” Jassy said, comparing the rise of AI shopping agents to the early days of search engines as sources of e-commerce discovery. “Today, search engines are a very small part of our referral traffic, and third-party agents are a very small subset of that. But I do think that we will find ways to partner.”
While Jassy did not explain how those partnerships would play out in practice, his comments were notable given the timing. In recent weeks, OpenAI has inked buzzy deals with Etsy, Walmart and Shopify, allowing shoppers to buy goods directly inside ChatGPT. Amazon, meanwhile, hasn’t publicly announced any partnerships with outside firms to facilitate AI-powered shopping on its site.
Instead, Amazon has tweaked the code behind its massive retail site to keep AI bots out. The move was likely intended to protect its $56 billion advertising business, which depends on shoppers browsing Amazon’s site. In August, referral traffic from ChatGPT to Amazon fell nearly 18% to less than 3% month-over-month after Amazon blocked more AI agents from its site, Modern Retail previously reported. While chatbots from companies like OpenAI or Perplexity can surface Amazon products to users, customers still must visit Amazon.com to complete their purchases.
Amazon’s evolving AI strategy
Jassy’s latest remarks don’t necessarily mean Amazon will follow competitors by striking similar partnerships. The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, reported in June that Amazon was exploring ways to act as an intermediary between its e-commerce platform and outside shopping agents, ensuring that customers who use these tools still get accurate prices, inventory and delivery information.
At the same time, Amazon remains laser-focused on developing its own AI tools, including Rufus, a consumer-facing shopping chatbot. On Thursday, the company said 250 million customers have used Rufus this year and that shoppers engaging with it are 60% more likely to complete a purchase. In April, Amazon also unveiled “Buy for Me,” a feature that lets customers purchase items from third-party websites without leaving Amazon’s app.
“Both of those have been successful for us,” Jassy said.
Amazon’s online stores segment posted $67.4 billion in sales during the quarter, up 10% year-over-year, suggesting the company’s expanded four-day Prime Day event in July paid off. Overall, Amazon’s net sales were $180.2 billion during the quarter, up 13% year-over-year.
Still, Amazon’s investments in AI are proving expensive. The company now expects to spend $125 billion in 2025, up from $118 billion, as it builds new data centers to power its AI infrastructure. CFO Brian Olsavsky said that figure will likely rise again in 2026.
Those costs have squeezed margins. Amazon’s quarterly operating income of $17.4 billion was essentially flat from a year earlier, even after deep cuts to corporate headcount. Earlier this week, Amazon announced it would eliminate 14,000 jobs, though Jassy told investors the layoffs were not “financially driven.”
Agentic commerce has been on Amazon’s radar for months. In a June blog post, Jassy wrote that billions of AI agents will one day handle tasks “from shopping to travel to daily chores.” He said Amazon plans to make it easier to build such agents and “partner” on new ones across its business units. But his latest remarks appear to be the first clear sign that Amazon is open to working with external AI shopping agents.
Still, Jassy told analysts that AI shopping agents still fall short of Amazon’s standards for customer experience. He said most lack personalization and often provide inaccurate pricing and delivery estimates. “We’ve got to find a way to make the customer experience better and have the right exchange of value,” he told analysts.
“It’s an open question where Amazon will go, in terms of partnerships,” said Sky Canaves, a retail analyst at eMarketer. For example, in the social-commerce realm, Amazon originally launched its own products, like Inspire, to compete with TikTok, before it discontinued the feature earlier this year. Now, Amazon partners with TikTok to enable Amazon ads to link to shopping within its platform. Amazon is “pretty forward-thinking in terms of what kind of partnerships they need to get ahead, even if it means e-commerce activity takes place off Amazon,” she said.