Lily AI

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?? AI agents are entering the commercial landscape — unlocking a new era of commerce. Introducing: A-Commerce. ?? Every major technological shift has transformed commerce and payments, resulting in generational companies along the way. The early web era unlocked online commerce, allowing platforms like Amazon and eBay to digitally connect sellers with global audiences, and necessitated new payment infrastructure like PayPal and WorldPay to revolutionize online payments. The rise of the social web turned networks into powerful discovery and distribution engines, enabling direct merchant-to-consumer relationships at scale. This was further accelerated as the mobile revolution gave rise to ubiquitous connectivity and unlocked? location-based services like Uber and Instacart. These necessitated even more modular and seamless transactional infrastructure unlocking opportunities for Stripe, Square, and Shopify. Each wave of commerce innovation brought new requirements in compliance, fraud prevention, and payments infrastructure— simultaneously creating massive opportunities for founders building the next generation of enabling technologies. Now, we stand at the brink of a new era in commerce, and anticipate the same dynamic playing out. ?? AI is creating a shift from manual, search-based transactions to more autonomous, intent-driven and personalized transaction experiences. As we saw in prior technology waves, the path of discovery and distribution massively evolved for merchants (ex: SEO and social media as critical gateways). Today, we're already witnessing the early stages of AI-facilitated? discovery through answer engines like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude, which act as intermediaries between consumers and merchants by synthesizing information and providing recommendations. ?Soon agents will complete these tasks end to end. And for the first time, agents will be invited into the payment system and will transact and negotiate dynamically on behalf of individuals, businesses, and even with other AI agents— creating a radically different commercial landscape. Our market map provides a framework to understanding the evolving opportunities and highlights the early movers currently laying the foundation for agent-driven transactions. Our own views here are evolving in real time and we welcome your input as we continue to refine our POV. Founders will drive the magic here, and we’re here to support them when they do. Reach out to me & Lauren Kolodny if you're building in the space. ?? A special thanks to those who have contributed, challenged, and expanded our thinking, including Cuy Sheffield (Visa), Daphne Che (Montage), Jeff Weinstein(Stripe), Jess Ou (LangChain), Jonathan King (Coinbase), Murtaza M., Sophie Altchek, Rachel Zabronsky (PayPal), and many others.