Will Black Friday 2025 be the breakout moment for agentic commerce? This week on Mixture of Experts, we're departing from our usual format for a Thanksgiving special focused entirely on AI agents. Host Tim Hwang is joined by Chris Hay, Lauren McHugh Olende and Volkmar Uhlig to debate whether 2025 is truly the "year of agents." Our experts break down why consumer-facing agentic commerce still faces major hurdles. We also explore the massive gap between building agent prototypes and deploying them at scale and discuss why the developer ecosystem needs a "Shopify moment." Then, could language-to-agent interfaces bypass traditional development entirely? From coding agents like Claude Code to cost optimization challenges, this episode covers what needs to happen for agents to move from POC to production. And finally, who's positioned to dominate the space?  

Plus: Anthropic dropped Claude 4.5 Opus this week. We sit down with Mihai Criveti to discuss initial impressions of the new model. Does this put Anthropic back at the top of the AI game?

00:00 – Introduction 

01:12 – Claude 4.5 Opus is here 

09:32 – Will Black Friday be big for agentic commerce? 

16:11– Agent experience for consumers vs. Enterprise 

17:31 – Is 2025 the year of the Agent? 

23:02 — AI agents in the developer ecosystem 

31:16 — Who will win the agent race? 

The opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of IBM or any other organization or entity. 

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