NRF 2026: commercetools Pushes Agentic Commerce Forward

At NRF 2026, commercetools unveiled a series of platform and customer enhancements that demonstrate how its global retailer clients are transitioning from AI testing to agentic commerce execution.

Along with other recent customer successes, the announcements highlight: (1) AI Hub as the connective foundation for agentic workflows; (2) early enterprise adoption of Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Suite (ACS); and (3) JD Sports’ dedication to implementing agentic commerce using commercetools Agentic Jumpstart and ACS.

When taken as a whole, these modifications show how the infrastructure for unified commerce is changing to accommodate a new reality. While transactions must continue to be precise, dependable, safe, and managed at the business level, shopping is increasingly taking place in AI-driven environments.

By expanding their current commerce foundation into new agentic channels while retaining control over price, availability, payments, and customer experience, commercetools’ strategy allows its retailer customers to perform agentic commerce without replatforming.

Retailers need to be able to translate intent into transactions in these contexts as AI agents and large language models (LLMs) emerge as new avenues for product discovery. Stripe’s ACS enables retailers to capture demand as soon as intent is stated by immediately connecting AI-driven discovery to secure checkout and payment operations.

The outcome is a workable route that enables merchants to implement agentic operations more quickly without sacrificing control or complexity.

Dirk Hoerig, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, commercetools, said,

“Retailers are reaching an inflection point where discovery is increasingly happening inside AI-driven environments, but transactions still have to be reliable, secure, and scalable. With Agentic Jumpstart and our work with Stripe, JD Sports is moving early to connect AI-led discovery directly to real transactions. We’ve done the hard work to make this practical so enterprises can move faster, stay in control, and capture demand wherever shopping happens next.”