In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot sits down with one of the most influential product leaders in commerce technology: Nitin Mangtani, SVP & GM of Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Their relationship goes back almost two decades, intersecting at Google, during the rise of online shopping, and now again at the dawn of agentic commerce. Nitin shares his journey from supply chain analytics at i2 Technologies, to building Google’s earliest commerce products, to founding and scaling PredictSpring, and finally leading Salesforce’s reinvention of unified and agentic commerce. This conversation is packed with history, strategy, and forward-looking insights into where AI shopping agents are taking the industry.

Timestamps:

03:20 – Early career: i2 Technologies & supply chain beginnings
10:00 – Joining Google in 2006
13:30 – Launching Google Commerce Search & Site Search
16:40 – Froogle/Google Shopping goes from “fun project” to billion-dollar business
18:00 – Comparison engines, feed specs & early retail taxonomy challenges
20:15 – Canonicalization and why product data was Google’s first “AI problem”
22:40 – Leaving Google to start PredictSpring
24:20 – PredictSpring’s original vision: mobile commerce & no-code apps
26:05 – Pivoting PredictSpring: TAM realities & shifting to Point of Sale
29:00 – Competing with Shopify POS, Square & the white space in enterprise POS
31:30 – Startup lessons: pivots, risk, funding & an 11.5-year journey
34:45 – Salesforce approaches PredictSpring: acquisition story
38:00 – Meeting Marc Benioff & Salesforce’s leadership culture
41:00 – Becoming SVP/GM: unifying Commerce Cloud, POS, OMS & Payments
44:10 – Agentforce & the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) with OpenAI & Stripe
47:10 – Discovery vs checkout: why syndicated checkout is harder
49:30 – Messaging commerce: WhatsApp, SMS & conversational transactions
51:30 – Full automation: replenishment, grocery & true agentic behavior
52:45 – Why commerce is strategically important to Salesforce

Agentic commerce isn’t just a channel change, it’s a full-stack rewrite of how discovery, decision-making, and checkout work. Nitin makes clear that the next wave won’t be about small UX improvements, but about systems that think, act, and transact on behalf of consumers and retailers alike. With leaders like Nitin driving Salesforce’s transformation, the future of unified and agentic commerce is arriving faster than expected.

👉 Connect with Nitin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitinmangtani/
👉 Learn more about Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

In this episode of Retailgentic, host Scot Wingo sits down with Johnathan McGowan, co-founder & CEO of PayOS, to discuss how AI agents will handle payments safely and compliantly.

From Visa and Mastercard partnerships to the first live Agentic token transaction, Johnathan explains how “day-one-ready” infrastructure will power the future of Agentic Commerce.

Timestamps:
01:56 — Meet Johnathan McGowan, co-founder of PayOS
04:00 — From Visa to PayOS: the founding story
06:40 — What Agentic Payments really mean
08:10 — Partnering with Visa & Mastercard
10:25 — “Day-one-ready” vs new payment rails
12:50 — What PayOS actually does
15:30 — Agent builders and early use cases
18:40 — Understanding “intent” in payments
21:50 — Future-proofing across protocols (AP2, ACP, etc.)
24:55 — How the first live Agentic transaction worked
29:50 — Why PCI compliance & trust matter
36:00 — The global scale of Agentic Commerce

As AI agents start making real-world transactions, companies like PayOS are making sure those payments are not just possible, but trusted, secure, and global from day one.

👉 Connect with John: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnathanm/
👉 Learn more about the PayOS: https://www.linkedin.com/company/payos/

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

OpenAI’s Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji joins Scot Wingo on the Retailgentic Podcast to unpack OpenAI's recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper "How People Use ChatGPT".

From asking vs. doing to AI-powered shopping behavior, this deep dive reveals how generative AI is transforming the economy and how soon “agentic” commerce will redefine online retail.

This episode is more than a window into OpenAI, it’s a look at the data shaping how humans and agents will interact, shop, and make decisions in the years ahead. If you care about where AI is really headed, this one’s not just worth your time, it’s required listening.

Timestamps:
02:00 – Meet Ronnie Chatterji, OpenAI’s Chief Economist
06:00 – How the ChatGPT usage study began
10:30 – What surprised the team most
15:00 – Asking vs. Doing: the evolution of agentic behavior
19:00 – The viral “colored columns” chart and what it shows
22:00 – AI and the future of writing, learning, and work
26:00 – How Ronnie bought jeans with ChatGPT
28:00 – The 2.1% insight: early AI commerce signals
33:00 – Voice + vision = the next leap for agentic shopping
38:00 – The global view of AI adoption
42:00 – What’s next in OpenAI’s research
45:00 – Closing thoughts & how to follow Ronnie

👉 Connect with Ronnie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-ronnie-chatterji/
👉 Learn more about the paper we discuss: https://openai.com/index/how-people-are-using-chatgpt/

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

In this episode of Retailgentic, Salesforce’s Director of Strategy and Consumer Insights Caila Schwartz joins Scot Wingo to break down Salesforce’s 2024 Holiday Forecast, and how AI agents like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are transforming the path to purchase.

They cover:

• How 21% of global holiday spend will be influenced by AI
• Why discovery (not discounts) is this year’s theme
• Why Baby Boomers are finally using ChatGPT for shopping
• How Gen Z is bringing the mall back with AI in hand
• The return of “Discount Chicken” and the Tuesday-after-Cyber-Monday surprise

Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome + Caila intro
01:00 – What Salesforce’s Consumer Insights team does
04:30 – Agentforce and AI momentum post-Dreamforce
07:00 – Holiday forecast: “Discovery” as the 2024 theme
08:00 – How Agentic tools are changing product search
09:45 – $263B in AI-influenced sales
12:00 – Gen Z, Baby Boomers, and agentic adoption
15:00 – Q3 data: growth, traffic, and product detail engagement
19:30 – LLM referrals vs social media conversions
22:00 – ChatGPT Checkout and embedded commerce
25:00 – AI in physical stores — 57% of shoppers use agents in-store
28:00 – Holiday sales forecast and discount trends
33:00 – The rise of “Discount Chicken”
38:00 – Loyalty consolidation and the price-sensitive consumer
42:00 – Gen Z’s love of in-store experiences
47:00 – The future of unified data and physical + digital retail
50:00 – Closing thoughts

👉 Connect with Manil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caila-schwartz/
👉 Learn more about Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot Wingo talks with Manil Uppal, Founder & CEO of CartAI, about building the “execution layer” of agentic commerce, where AI agents don’t just recommend products, they buy them. From his early startups acquired by H-E-B and UPS to his vision for CartAI, Manil shares how his team is solving the hardest problem in agentic shopping: completing checkout seamlessly across any retailer.

Key Timestamps

• 00:02:00 – Manil’s background: from delivery startups to AI infrastructure
• 00:09:00 – The “aha” moment: from “Where to Buy” to “Go Buy It”
• 00:15:00 – The 3 layers of Agentic Commerce: Catalog, Payments, Checkout
• 00:20:00 – How CartAI executes merchant-native checkouts across platforms
• 00:26:00 – Why retailers need a whitelist for good agents
• 00:33:00 – Handling out-of-stocks, variants, and dynamic pricing
• 00:40:00 – Thoughts on ChatGPT’s new ACP standard
• 00:43:00 – Lessons from early food delivery startups for agentic commerce
• 00:46:00 – The future: vertical AI apps, expert agents, and commerce everywhere

Agentic commerce is evolving fast and CartAI is building the rails to make it work.

👉 Connect with Manil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maniluppal/
👉 Learn more about CartAI: https://www.cartai.ai
👉 Explore their substack: https://substack.com/@cartai

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

In this special Retailgentic episode, guest host Kiri Masters turns the tables on our regular host, Scot Wingo (CEO, ReFiBuy). They unpack the next big retail revolution, Agentic Commerce, and what it means for shoppers, retailers, and brands as AI shopping agents like ChatGPT and Perplexity redefine discovery, loyalty, and checkout.

Scot shares the lessons behind ChannelAdvisor, Spiffy, and now ReFiBuy, plus why messy product catalogs, ad overload, and loyalty programs will determine who wins in the AI marketplace era.

⏱️ Key Timestamps
00:00 – Intro: Kiri turns the tables
02:15 – Scot’s early career & first startup
07:50 – Building ChannelAdvisor
14:30 – Lessons from going public
20:05 – Spiffy and the services economy
26:40 – Discovering AI → the spark for ReFiBuy
33:00 – What is Agentic Commerce?
38:20 – ChatGPT & Perplexity in the marketplace race
45:00 – The product catalog problem explained
51:00 – How ReFiBuy solves it with AI
55:20 – Retailers’ edge: loyalty, data, customer experience
59:00 – The next phase: marketplaces 2.0
1:02:00 – Close: The future of AI shopping

👉 Connect with Scot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
👉 Learn more about ReFiBuy: refibuy.ai

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai 
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://youtu.be/4xI9qXNU_R0

In this episode of the Retailgentic Podcast, Scot Wingo sits down with Jason Nyus, General Manager of North America at Shopware, a leading open-source e-commerce platform. Jason brings over 25 years of experience (20+ at Digital River) to unpack where e-commerce is heading, why Shopware is betting big on agentic commerce, and how the Agentic Commerce Alliance could shape the industry’s future.

Timestamps:
02:00 – Jason’s 25-year journey in e-commerce, from Digital River to Shopware
06:00 – The early days of app stores: Nokia, Blackberry, Microsoft
09:45 – Why Digital River pivoted and what commoditization taught him
13:00 – Why Shopware sees opportunity in mid-market and complex use cases
20:30 – Shopware’s scale: $23B processing volume, top 6 global commerce platform
26:00 – Introducing the Agentic Commerce Alliance: vision, openness, and independence
36:00 – Use cases for agentic commerce: competitive pricing, loyalty, and customer service
42:00 – Risks and opportunities for Shopify, Google, and Amazon in the agentic era
46:00 – Jason’s predictions: a billion-dollar brand without a website, 25% of e-commerce becoming agentic by 2030
Jason makes it clear: the future of commerce won’t be decided by one platform. Shopware’s vision of an open, agent-friendly ecosystem is a bold alternative to a closed, platform-controlled future. The Agentic Commerce Alliance could become one of the most important initiatives shaping AI-driven retail.

👉 Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnyhus/
👉 Learn more about Shopware’s vision: shopware.com
👉 Explore the Agentic Commerce Alliance: agentic-commerce.org

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai 
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://youtu.be/4xI9qXNU_R0

On this special Retailgentic episode, we sit down with Jordi Montes, CEO & co-founder of SimpleCheckout.ai, who officially launched today. Jordi shares his journey from Bitcoin’s Lightning Network to building a unified checkout and payment framework for AI agents. We dive into why agentic payments matter, what SimpleCheckout solves, and how it could reshape the future of online retail.

Timestamps:

• 00:01:55 – Jordi’s background: from TravelPerk to Lightning Network
• 00:05:30 – The “sci-fi moment” that inspired SimpleCheckout
• 00:12:00 – Why payments must evolve beyond the browser
• 00:18:00 – Mapping agentic commerce to the travel industry model
• 00:23:00 – Competing visions: SimpleCheckout vs. PayOS vs. Nacuda
• 00:31:00 – The role of personalization in agentic commerce
• 00:39:45 – Why SimpleCheckout is payment- and merchant-agnostic
• 00:43:30 – Looking ahead: the future of agent-to-agent payments

SimpleCheckout’s launch marks a turning point in how AI agents will transact. As agentic commerce takes hold, Jordi’s vision of a universal, flexible checkout protocol could define the rails of the next decade.

Checkout their substack announcement: https://simplecheckout.substack.com/p/agentic-commerce-made-simple

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

In this episode of the Retailgentic Podcast, Scot Wingo sits down with Melissa Minkow, Global Director of Retail Strategies & Insights at CI&T. Melissa shares her perspective on consumer behavior, why ingrained shopping habits stick, and how agentic commerce will shape the future of retail.

We cover:
- Why consumer habits are so hard to change, even in grocery shopping
- Exclusive sneak peek: fresh survey data showing 75% of consumers now use AI in their path to purchase
- How agentic commerce could transform loyalty, pricing, and even group buying
- Lessons from Target Canada and why back-office AI matters more than flashy consumer tools
- Why TikTok might be the blueprint for agentic retail experiences

Retail is changing fast and the agentic future is already here. Subscribe for more conversations, insights, and data shaping the next chapter of commerce.

Timestamps:
00:00 – Consumers are routinized: why habits stick
01:08 – Introducing the Retailgenic Podcast
02:15 – Guest intro: Melissa Minco of CI&T
04:06 – Melissa’s background: from Anthropologie to Target to CI&T
08:52 – Target Canada lessons & retail systems breakdown
12:00 – Apps vs. consumers: adoption, trust, and pushback
15:00 – Agentic commerce: inside vs. outside view
19:00 – Will consumers build their own shopping agents?
23:00 – Exclusive data: 75% of consumers now use AI in their path to purchase
28:00 – Sponsored GEO and consumer trust
33:00 – Agent strategies: retailer, consumer, and third-party
36:00 – Best practices: getting your “back office” right first
40:00 – Checkouts, marketplaces, and the future of digital retail
46:00 – Loyalty in the agentic era: Gen Z, UK vs. US, and discounts
50:00 – Group buying, negotiation, and dynamic pricing
56:00 – Reading the tea leaves: websites, zero-click, and consumer control
01:00:00 – Melissa’s “personal agents” vision of the future
01:05:00 – TikTok as a model for agentic commerce
01:08:00 – Wrap-up & closing thoughts

Report drops at CI&T website soon: https://ciandt.com/us/en-us

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.

Dr. Amine Allouah completed his PhD at Columbia Business School, specializing in algorithmic game theory and optimization in multi-agent systems. After leading applied science work at Meta across ads, notifications, and marketplace teams, he co-founded My Custom AI to help enterprises deploy tailored AI solutions. His work bridges deep theory with practical applications, shaping how businesses think about LLMs, agents, and the economics of AI.

This week on Retailgentic, we’re joined by Dr. Amine, co-founder of My Custom AI and one of the sharpest minds at the intersection of AI, economics, and retail. In this conversation, we dig deep into:

• Amine’s journey: École Polytechnique → Columbia → Meta → entrepreneurship
• What algorithmic game theory means for real-world AI systems
• Why enterprises need custom models for accuracy, privacy, and cost savings
• The ACES Framework: how agents really “shop” online
• Surprising findings: agents ignore ads, but positioning still matters
• Why MCP isn’t enough, and what’s next for protocols
• Implications for retailers, brands, and the future of retail media

If you’ve ever wondered how agents will reshape retail and what brands need to do right now to prepare, this episode will give you a front-row seat to the future of agentic commerce.

Highlights/Timestamps ⏱️
0:00 – How agents drive omnichannel growth beyond e-commerce
5:00 – Meet guest Amine Allouah: from École Polytechnique to Columbia PhD
9:30 – Game theory, algorithm design, and AI: lessons from his PhD
13:45 – From Meta AI researcher to startup founder: the origin of My Custom AI
18:10 – What My Custom AI does: feasibility studies, custom model training & workshops
23:25 – Why retailers sometimes need their own LLMs: accuracy, privacy & cost savings
29:20 – Beyond LLaMA: multimodal models, recommendation systems, and custom architectures
34:05 – The ACES Framework: building a sandbox to study agent shopping
39:16 – Optimizations around pricing, loyalty & group buying
39:24 – Why group buying startups have struggled
39:35 – Aligning buyer and seller agents for better outcomes
44:15 – Agent behavior insights: Claude and the “ergonomic” keyword example
48:50 – The case for seller-side agents and real-time PDP updates
51:31 – Amazon is the first company to adopt the ACES framework
55:00 – Retail media networks in an agent world: real-time “agentic ads”
58:00 – Will websites die? The future of browsing, checkouts & merchant centers
1:01:00 – Closing thoughts + where to find Amine & the ACES paper

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.