SCHÖPPINGEN and COLOGNE, Germany, July 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Shopware, the leading global open-source ecommerce platform, today announced the creation of The Agentic Commerce Alliance in Europe, positioned as a proactive response to the current AI landscape poised to disrupt the digital commerce ecosystem.

"The Agentic Commerce Alliance is a strategic commitment to preserving a diverse, competitive, and innovative digital marketplace where AI technology amplifies, rather than diminishes, the uniqueness and humanity of commerce," said Stefan Hamann, CEO, Shopware.

As AI agents increasingly handle autonomous transactions within split-second decision windows, traditional concepts of brand identity, customer loyalty, and merchant differentiation are at risk of becoming obsolete. Without deliberate intervention, this centralized AI-driven commerce landscape could reduce merchants to mere commodities, eroding diversity, innovation, and consumer choice.

"The paradigm is shifting rapidly toward a world where bots, rather than humans, dominate commerce interactions. Tech giants like OpenAI, Amazon, and Google are positioned to become the dominant Commerce Hubs that can handle the entirety of transaction cycles from payments to verification," said Hamann.

The alliance has two primary goals:

• Ensure merchants can survive in the Bot Economy: The alliance will establish  open, interoperable standards that empower merchants of any size to participate in agent-to-agent commerce without surrendering control to centralized AI platforms. By creating frameworks for experience differentiation, AI Agents will gain access to more than just price including customer service quality, brand trustworthiness, product expertise, and community alignment.
• Leverage AI for meaningful differentiation: By enabling merchants to retain distinct brand identities and value propositions that resonate beyond purely transactional decision-making, the Alliance will drive innovation with hyper-personalization, immersive 3D shopping experiences, frictionless automation, and expert-level customer support.

The urgency of this initiative is underscored by the impressive roster of industry partners already onboard. Alongside Shopware, which pioneered the first AI Copilot with OpenAI in early 2022, the alliance includes 15 other leading industry players across diverse sectors. Shopware powers over 55,000 B2C and B2B merchants worldwide, exemplifying the transformative potential and practical viability of agentic commerce.

"Joining the Agentic Commerce Alliance reflects a strong commitment to shaping the future of digital commerce. We believe it belongs to those who fuse technology with brand identity. Agentic Commerce isn't just a trend - it's a long-term vision to democratize commerce, where AI empowers brands of all sizes to thrive, "said Borys Skraba, CCO, Strix Group.