Salesforce is pushing deeper into AI-driven commerce with the launch of Agentforce Commerce, a unified platform aimed at helping brands syndicate product catalogs into emerging AI channels like ChatGPT while maintaining tight control over customer relationships on their own sites, apps, and stores.
The move comes as AI assistants rapidly reshape product discovery and online demand. Traffic referred by consumer AI platforms jumped 119% year over year in the first half of 2025, and Salesforce expects intelligent agents to influence 22% of global orders during Cyber Week. For retailers — and increasingly distributors — the shift represents a new front in customer acquisition and digital channel management.
A Platform Built for AI-Native Purchasing
Agentforce Commerce is designed to connect a merchant’s catalog, pricing, and checkout directly into AI-driven discovery platforms, using emerging standards such as the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP). Salesforce says brands will soon be able to make products fully shoppable inside ChatGPT through native integrations powered by ACP and Stripe.
On owned channels, the platform brings agentic capabilities into storefronts, mobile apps, stores, and service interactions. Retailers and distributors can deploy customized AI agents trained on product, order, and customer data to manage guided shopping, answer complex questions, generate recommendations, and automate fulfillment tasks such as order routing.
The goal: unify digital commerce, point of sale, and order management so a customer’s experience — and a company’s data — moves seamlessly across channels.
“Agentforce Commerce is delivering transformative new capabilities that span the entire agentic shopping journey,” said Nitin Mangtani, senior vice president and general manager of Agentforce Commerce and Retail.
Early Adopters
Brands, including Pandora and Pacsun are already using Salesforce’s agentic tools. Pandora reports a 10% lift in net promoter score after automating routine service inquiries and deploying AI-driven recommendations on its digital storefront. Pacsun is experimenting with AI shopping experiences on conversational platforms to better reach Gen Z and Gen Alpha customers.
Why Wholesale Distributors Should Care
While today’s announcement targets retail, the underlying shift — commerce flowing directly through AI agents — has direct implications for distributors.
- AI channels are the next-generation “search.”
If end-users, contractors, mechanics, engineers, and procurement teams start asking AI agents for products — “Find me a 3-ton rooftop unit under $5,000,” “Show me alternatives to this MRO part,” “What’s in stock near me?” — distributors need their catalogs represented in those channels or risk losing visibility. - Agentic commerce collapses the buying journey.
Tools like ACP and AP2 point toward a world where product discovery, configuration, quoting, and ordering happen inside a single conversational interface. For distributors with complex SKUs, contract pricing, or inventory variability, failing to syndicate clean data into these ecosystems could push buyers toward competitors with more AI-ready catalogs. - Unified data and order routing matter even more in B2B.
Distributors operate fragmented tech stacks — ERP, WMS, CRM, ecommerce, field sales, counter sales. Agentforce-style systems show where the market is going: AI agents that pull from unified data to answer questions, guide purchases, and route orders across branches and distribution centers automatically. - Manufacturers and retailers are training customers to expect AI-native experiences.
As consumers and business buyers grow accustomed to conversational shopping and instant, AI-generated answers, distributors will face pressure to deliver similar experiences: guided product selection, spec matching, compatibility checks, and real-time availability. - Disintermediation risk is real.
If AI platforms become independent shopping channels — and distributors aren’t represented — the channel could shift upstream to manufacturers or downstream to aggregators.
The Broader Ecosystem
Salesforce’s strategy leans heavily on open protocols meant to give brands a foothold across AI ecosystems:
- ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) for syndicating catalogs and enabling AI-native checkout.
- Stripe integrations for secure, instant purchasing.
- Google’s AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol) for cross-platform payments initiated by AI agents.
Agentforce also includes new automation tools for merchandising, point of sale, and fulfillment, along with expanded localization and guided shopping capabilities across seven languages.
The Bottom Line
Salesforce is making a bet that AI agents — not websites — will become the next major shopping channel. For retailers, it’s a way to reach customers wherever discovery happens. For distributors, it’s a big indicator that digital commerce is moving into AI-native environments, and whoever brings accurate product data, clean inventory, pricing controls, and AI-friendly content to these channels will gain an advantage.
The platform may be retail-focused today, but the underlying shift applies across every sector where product search, configuration, or replenishment drives revenue — including wholesale distribution.
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