Agentic Commerce · Agentic Commerce
Amazon's Shopping Agent Moves Into Text Messages. Alexa Builds the Cart and Buys.
Invites go first to a small group of US customers. Millions more follow within weeks.
· 2 min read
- AMZN
Amazon is inviting select US customers to text a contact called Alexa Shopping, which searches for products, compares options and buys for them.
A text thread has no results page. The agent messages back suggestions, and that reply is where a brand now has to show up. How often a brand appears in it, against how often it appears in search, is the new line in its conversion math.
How does buying by text work?
A customer accepts the terms, links a phone number and texts a request: a weekly grocery order, a photo of an outfit, a price alert on AirPods. The agent searches, compares options and messages back suggestions, then adds items to the cart and completes the purchase on the customer’s behalf. A customer can also tell it to add items to the cart automatically.
Invitations start with a small group, and the option reaches millions more customers in the coming weeks. Amazon is rolling out a carry-over, so a request begun by text continues in the Amazon app, the website and Alexa-enabled devices, and the reverse. Order updates and delivery notices will later join the same thread.
How big is the agent already?
Customer interactions with Alexa for Shopping rose 570% from a year earlier in the third-quarter results. The number of customers using its agentic features, such as alerts and auto-buy, has grown more than eight times since the start of 2026, and more than 400 million customers have used the agent in the past 12 months.
Amazon did not disclose how many orders or what share of its sales run through the agent, or how many customers will get the text option.
What changes for brands and rival channels?
The agent remembers what a customer has told it, such as vegan only or organic only, and shapes its suggestions around it.
The same thread reaches beyond Amazon’s store. Through a feature called Shop Direct, the agent can surface products from stores across the web. For a rival retailer, the customer’s request now starts in Amazon’s thread.
Which of a retailer’s orders now start with an agent’s shortlist rather than a visit to that retailer’s own site?
