According to CNBC, Perplexity AI announced Wednesday it will launch a free agentic shopping product for U.S. users next week, perfectly timed for the holiday shopping season. The artificial intelligence startup has partnered with PayPal ahead of the rollout, enabling direct purchases from more than 5,000 merchants through Perplexity’s search interface. This follows their “Buy With Pro” subscription offering from late last year, but the new free version promises better shopping intent detection and personalized results using memory from previous searches. Perplexity declined to reveal whether it will earn revenue from completed transactions, creating an interesting contrast with competitor OpenAI’s Instant Checkout feature that launched in September and explicitly takes fees from purchases.
The agentic shopping revolution
Here’s what’s actually interesting about this move. Perplexity’s chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko told CNBC that “most people want to still do their own research” but want it “streamlined and simplified.” That’s the core insight driving this product. Basically, they’re not trying to replace human decision-making entirely – they’re building an AI co-pilot for shopping research. The system apparently learns from your previous searches to deliver more personalized results over time. But how good can this really be at detecting shopping intent versus just search intent? There’s a big difference between someone researching products and someone ready to buy, and getting that wrong could mean either missed opportunities or frustrated users.
The revenue question nobody’s answering
Now here’s the thing that makes me skeptical. Perplexity won’t say whether they’re taking a cut from transactions. That’s… interesting. OpenAI straight up admits they’re taking fees from their Instant Checkout feature. So why the secrecy? Either they haven’t figured out their monetization strategy yet (which seems unlikely given the PayPal partnership), or they’re testing the waters before announcing commission structures. Or maybe they’re betting that driving more users to their platform is valuable enough on its own. But let’s be real – AI infrastructure isn’t cheap, and they’re not doing this purely out of the goodness of their hearts.
Everyone wants to be your shopping assistant
This puts Perplexity in direct competition with OpenAI’s shopping feature, and honestly, this feels like the beginning of a much bigger trend. Every AI company seems to be realizing that commerce integration is the next logical step. But there’s a fundamental tension here. Do users actually want to shop inside their AI interfaces? Or is this just another case of tech companies trying to insert themselves into every possible transaction? The holiday season rollout is smart timing though – if there’s ever a moment when people are willing to try new shopping tools, it’s when they’re desperate to find the perfect gifts without losing their minds.
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