Baird Managing Director of Internet Research Colin Sebastian shared Wall Street's view on how agentic commerce is reshaping major e-commerce and advertising platforms (Retailgentic). Sebastian covers five mega-cap names alone representing over $12 trillion in market capitalization and explained Baird's competitive framework for internet winners: Scale, Product, Engineering, Efficiency, and Data (Retailgentic).
Meta is Sebastian's highest-conviction AI bet this year, driven by WhatsApp business agents, Meta AI, and unmatched consumer reach (Retailgentic). Foundation models themselves will become commoditized; the real value accrues to the platforms, applications, and distribution layers built on top (Retailgentic). Amazon's opening of its catalog to AI agents may have crossed a line that strengthens its ecosystem further, while AI agents bypassing search results and category pages could pressure retail media's biggest revenue stream (Retailgentic).
Long-term winners will control identity, payments, checkout, and fulfillment rather than just discovery (Retailgentic). Wall Street remains nervous about Shopify because AI could bypass storefronts and Shop Pay entirely (Retailgentic). Sebastian expects agentic commerce adoption to meaningfully accelerate after Q4, with even a one- or two-point lift on current numbers being significant (Retailgentic).