Why the next growth channel for e-commerce startups is being recommended by an AI you’ve never met

AI has already become a default tool for startups trying to move faster. Founders use it to write code, draft marketing copy and test product ideas, shrinking work that once took weeks into a matter of hours. For a young e-commerce brand, that speed can be the difference between keeping up and getting buried by bigger rivals.

Now the same technology is changing how shoppers search. In the UK, 21% of shoppers are using AI tools for online shopping today, and 70% say they want that help in the future. For now, the main draw is price hunting: 31% use AI to find the cheapest retailer, while 28% want help spotting promotions and discounts.

But that is only the thin end of the wedge. The bigger idea is agentic commerce, where AI does more than compare prices. It could learn preferences, suggest products and even complete purchases. That forces retailers to think about a strange new audience: not just the customer, but the model acting on the customer’s behalf.

The article’s argument is that startups may actually have an edge here. Unlike large chains, they do not have to wrestle with layers of old systems and slow approvals. They can be built to be agent-legible from the start, which means set up so AI models can read, cite and use their product information without a fight.

Affiliate marketing is the closest analogy. Good affiliate programmes already depend on making products easy for intermediaries to understand and promote, with the right incentives and enough flexibility to adapt. Companies that treated that channel seriously are already used to thinking one step beyond the end buyer, and that mindset now matters in AI search too. The point is simple: if AI becomes part of the shopping path, startup growth will depend on being visible to the machine as much as to the human.