Wayfair: Google (UCP co-developer). Instacart: Google + OpenAI (grocery vertical). Best Buy: Google (electronics). Booking.com: OpenAI (travel vertical).
Amazon's Fortress
Amazon controls 40% of US e-commerce . 90% of shoppers start searches on Amazon.com. $56B advertising business at stake. 47+ AI bots blocked.
Real-World Examples
AmazonEtsyGoogleInstacartMicrosoftTarget
Key Insight
"This is looking like the one opportunity to try to dislodge them," said Michael Morton, e-commerce analyst at MoffettNathanson. "You're seeing partnership announcements and willingness to work with everybody that you have not traditionally seen, because Amazon's dominance just gets stronger every day."
A remarkable pattern has emerged: every major retailer is partnering with every AI platform—except Amazon. The common enemy has created unprecedented cooperation.
Amazon controls 40% of US e-commerce. 90% of shoppers start searches on Amazon.com. $56B advertising business at stake. 47+ AI bots blocked. Zero external AI platform partnerships.
“This is looking like the one opportunity to try to dislodge them,” said Michael Morton, e-commerce analyst at MoffettNathanson. “You’re seeing partnership announcements and willingness to work with everybody that you have not traditionally seen, because Amazon’s dominance just gets stronger every day.”
Retailers see AI shopping as the first real chance to break Amazon’s 40% e-commerce dominance. Hence: partner with everyone else.
Wayfair: Google (UCP co-developer). Instacart: Google + OpenAI (grocery vertical). Best Buy: Google (electronics). Booking.com: OpenAI (travel vertical).
What are the amazon's fortress?
Amazon controls 40% of US e-commerce . 90% of shoppers start searches on Amazon.com. $56B advertising business at stake. 47+ AI bots blocked. Zero external AI platform partnerships.
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.
