On January 8, 2026—just days before Google's NRF announcements— Microsoft launched Copilot Checkout , entering the agentic commerce race with its own in-chat purchasing capability.
The Competitive Landscape
The AI commerce market now has four major players with distinct approaches:
Despite being OpenAI's largest investor, Microsoft is building its own commerce infrastructure. This suggests:
The Implication
Protocol fragmentation is real. Merchants now face the question: which protocols to support? The answer may be "all of them"—at least until a winner emerges.
Real-World Examples
GoogleMicrosoftPaypalShopifyStripeOpenai
Key Insight
On January 8, 2026—just days before Google's NRF announcements— Microsoft launched Copilot Checkout , entering the agentic commerce race with its own in-chat purchasing capability.
Exec Package + Claude OS Master Skill | Business Engineer Founding Plan
FourWeekMBA x Business Engineer | Updated 2026
The News
On January 8, 2026—just days before Google’s NRF announcements—Microsoft launched Copilot Checkout, entering the agentic commerce race with its own in-chat purchasing capability.
Copilot Checkout uses PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe for payment processing.
The Competitive Landscape
The AI commerce market now has four major players with distinct approaches:
May 2025: Partnered with PayPal for in-chat purchases, travel booking, and concert tickets
November 2025: Launched free agentic shopping for U.S. users
The Implication
Protocol fragmentation is real. Merchants now face the question: which protocols to support? The answer may be “all of them”—at least until a winner emerges.
What is Microsoft Copilot Checkout Enters the AI Commerce Race?
On January 8, 2026—just days before Google's NRF announcements— Microsoft launched Copilot Checkout , entering the agentic commerce race with its own in-chat purchasing capability.
What is the competitive landscape?
The AI commerce market now has four major players with distinct approaches:
Despite being OpenAI's largest investor, Microsoft is building its own commerce infrastructure. This suggests:
What are the perplexity's play?
May 2025: Partnered with PayPal for in-chat purchases, travel booking, and concert tickets. November 2025: Launched free agentic shopping for U.S. users
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
