Season 8, Episode 3: Amazon and Agentic Commerce (with Adam Epstein)

Amazon is positioning its ad-and-logistics stack, not a take-rate, as the mechanism by which AI agents will monetize e-commerce.

• Agentic commerce still a mirage: Epstein and host Eric Seufert agree that outside niche long-tail use cases (e.g., Alexander Wang's vintage T-shirt search), third-party AI shopping agents don't beat Amazon's low-friction checkout for mainstream purchases.
• Take-rate model is dead: ChatGPT already abandoned merchant take-rates as unworkable; the hosts argue monetization must shift to advertising, since neither retailers nor consumers will absorb a markup.

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