Pocket Money
Last week, agents got names of their own. This week, some of them got pocket money. On 13 October, Shopify opened its catalogue of more than a billion products, and its checkout, to any AI agent that can connect, with no partnership needed. Shop now lets a shopper give their agent a weekly
Most important signal right now
Shopping agents get an open checkout and a budget
Opening checkout to any agent, plus a spending limit the shopper sets, is the clearest move yet from AI that recommends to AI that buys.
Assumption to challenge
"Agentic commerce needs a special partnership with each platform, or a person's approval for every purchase."
The one-paragraph version
Last week, agents got names of their own. This week, some of them got pocket money. On 13 October, Shopify opened its catalogue of more than a billion products, and its checkout, to any AI agent that can connect, with no partnership needed. Shop now lets a shopper give their agent a weekly, monthly or total budget instead of approving every purchase. Two days later, ServiceNow announced a pass that every agent carries while it works, which can redirect, restrict or stop it mid-task. A new benchmark gave AI agents $10, $50 or $200 to complete real machine-learning projects and found that more money doesn't always help. Further out, the lidar maker Hesai launched a camera that turns real places into robot training data. A survey suggests young Americans are tiring of endless scrolling. And Redwood Materials is selling old car batteries to AI data centres as a way to get power faster than the grid can deliver it. The question is shifting from who did it? to how far may it go, and who can stop it?
