Brands Briefing: How leaders at Fabletics, PayPal and more are thinking about the agentic AI opportunity
AI-powered shopping agents are the topic du jour as 2026 gets underway. But, even as brands express excitement over new technologies and new partnerships, they say there’s still a long way to go before “autonomous shopping” becomes the norm.
While agentic AI dominated conversations at this week’s National Retail Federation Big Show, among attendees, sentiment was mixed. In a moment that underscored how agentic AI is not yet mainstream, journalist Jason Del Rey asked the audience in a session on Sunday how many people used AI for shopping research. The majority of hands in the room went up. But when he asked how many people would actually trust AI to complete a transaction, about half put their hands down.
Agentic commerce — a term that applies to autonomous AI agents acting on the customer’s behalf to find products, compare prices and complete purchases — could drive up to $5 trillion in global retail sales by 2030, per McKinsey. The technology is gathering speed as more consumers turn to AI engines to get shopping inspiration, look for discounts and even make transactions. But numbers vary on how widespread their use is, with surveys showing that anywhere from 33% to 83% of respondents used AI to do their holiday shopping in 2025. What’s more, when it comes to AI-powered checkout, capabilities are largely limited; for the most part, customers can only buy one product at a time.
It’s important to remain realistic about what AI can and can’t replicate, retail executives who spoke with Modern Retail over the past week said. On stage at NRF, Mike Edmonds, vp of agentic commerce at PayPal, said, “I’m under no false illusion that shopping one day will be completely autonomous and humans are no longer interacting with brands.”
In a separate conversation with Modern Retail, Edmonds said he thinks shoppers will be increasingly open to agent-to-agent interactions when it comes to certain low-consideration categories — like paper towels — as long as trust and transparency are there. But for a high-consideration item like a $5,000 luxury bag, “I kind of want to have my hand on the wheel when I purchase that,” Edmonds said.
Brands, while excited about agentic commerce, admitted they’re still waiting for more data to trickle in. Meera Bhatia, the president of Fabletics, told Modern Retail that the brand has enabled checkout within Perplexity and that it gets traffic from ChatGPT. When asked if Fabletics gets a sense of how many sales are coming from AI engines, Bhatia said, “I don’t know that all the tracking is really there yet, to be honest.” But shoppers are “ultimately still ending up on our site for checkout,” she shared.
“I think in things like activewear, [customers] still want a rich shopping experience that’s not as transactional,” Bhatia said. “They’re still coming to our site for reviews and product photos and influencer content. You don’t have that on all of these [AI engine] experiences, yet. But it’s still early days. It’s all evolving, and we’ll be part of however the customer wants to shop.”
In the meantime, brands of all sizes used NRF to talk up their new agentic AI tools and capabilities, as well as their partnerships with tech companies. For Anthropologie, it was a “no brainer” to invest in shopping agents, URBN CIO Rob Frieman said in a session on Sunday. Anthropologie is a partner of Microsoft’s Copilot Checkout function, which debuted on Jan. 8 in the lead-up to the Big Show. In Copilot, customers can submit queries like, “I’m looking for professional dresses in size medium” and then buy resulting products from Anthropologie and other partners.
However, there are still some “sharp edges” when it comes to agents in general, Frieman said. “We want to understand how customer behavior is changing,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of insights about that [behavior] right now, but that space is growing.”
On Sunday, The Home Depot announced new capabilities for its Magic Apron assistant, which uses AI to help customers build lists of products from brands like DeWalt and Whirlpool. And Google announced Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open-sourced standard for agentic commerce endorsed by partners like Best Buy and Macy’s.
Loyalty also remains top of mind as brands expand their agentic capabilities, executives shared. For the most part, brands’ loyalty programs aren’t integrated into transactions made on platforms like ChatGPT — meaning they miss out on some valuable data. At PayPal, the No. 1 ask among merchants is to build larger carts on AI platforms, Edmonds told Modern Retail. “A tight No. 2 is loyalty,” he said. “We have it on our roadmap for the first half of this year to help support merchants and their loyalty programs in agentic.”
At NRF, brands also expressed that they want to make sure they remain the “agent of record,” meaning that they are the ones processing the transactions from AI checkout. It’s critical, URBN’s Frieman said, to have a “smooth, frictionless customer experience, but also one that still retains that brand connection.” Anthropologie is a “merchant of record” for Copilot Checkout, he said.
Pacsun CEO Brie Olson told Modern Retail that agentic commerce is “not a new topic of conversation for Pacsun.” “For the last 12-18 months, we’ve been acutely aware of agentic commerce and how it will be flowing,” she said. “I think we were all surprised from August forward how quickly the movement was, and the expedited path.”
“At the same time,” she continued, “we’re taking thoughtful approaches and strategies to our business to adapt to a world that is more agentic. And I think that thoughtful and strategic approach will prove out to keep Pacsun in lockstep with what’s happening in the industry.” –Julia Waldow
Overheard at NRF
“We’re being pitched so hard here, I have been covering my badge while walking the floor.” –one brand executive on aggressive vendors
“This show has morphed into a tech conference over the last few years. Now our clients want to come to check out all the latest AI providers under one roof.” –a retail consultant
“If there was a lot of new uncertainty for retailers, I don’t think NRF would be nearly as busy as it is.” –a strategy executive at a tech company
What we’re reading
- After Ssense filed for bankruptcy protection last year, its founders have won a bid to retain ownership.
- Kendra Scott has a new CEO: Chris Blakeslee, formerly the CEO of Athleta.
- AG1 has expanded its roster of retail partners, announcing on Monday that it is launching nationwide at The Vitamin Shoppe.
What we’ve covered
- How non-alcoholic beverage brands like Athletic Brewing and Recess are updating their marketing strategies this Dry January to emphasize moderation.
- The Winter Olympics is going to be a big product and marketing moment this year for brands like Nike, Salomon, Ralph Lauren, Skims and J.Crew.
- Retail leaders at Target, Lowe’s and more shared the AI investments they’re plotting for 2026.