As AI becomes a bigger part of everyday life, we take a look at how it can be applied in commerce, where software agents can search, decide, and complete transactions on a user’s behalf. Moderated by Blair Garrou, this session at Mercury Fund Day at The Ion breaks down the shift from real-time, user-driven checkouts to systems based on ongoing permissions and delegation. The panel features Matt Bouchner (Satsuma.ai), Coert Voorhees (LISNR), and Aileen Allen (Mercury Fund), who discuss how new payment rails and machine-readable systems are making this possible and where the biggest opportunities will be as this new model of commerce takes shape.

🎧 Episode Highlights

[08:17]: Building the infrastructure layer powering agentic commerce across retailers

[15:53]: From “bot equals bad” to “bot equals customer” in retail adoption

[23:38]: The gap between payment protocols and real merchant adoption

[28:20]: Why retailers are still in experimentation, not full-scale deployment

[47:01]: The tipping point: when consumers get used to buying through agents

Key Takeaways:

● Agentic commerce is shifting transactions from user-driven sessions to delegated, always-on workflows. Instead of actively browsing and checking out, users will set preferences and let software agents discover, compare, and act on their behalf.

● The biggest bottleneck isn’t the idea, it’s the infrastructure. Reliable product data, merchant readiness, payment rails, and trust layers all need to align before agentic commerce can move from experimentation to real adoption.

● Control and trust will define winners in this new model. Retailers and brands want visibility into how their products are presented and sold, while both merchants and consumers need confidence that agents are acting accurately, securely, and in their best interest.

Guest Spotlight:

Blair Garrou

Blair Garrou is the Managing Partner at Mercury Fund, where he has built his career around backing and advising tech entrepreneurs and scaling disruptive startups beyond Silicon Valley.

Matt Bouchner

Matt Bouchner is the founder and CEO of Satsuma.ai, where he helps retailers and brands make their products discoverable and purchasable across emerging AI-driven channels. He started the company while in college, originally building a consumer app that scaled to over a million users before pivoting to infrastructure powering agentic commerce.

Coert Voorhees

Coert Voorhees, VP Commercial at LISNR, leads go-to-market efforts for a platform that enables secure, proximity-based data exchange through sound. He joined LISNR following its acquisition of Arden, the web3 loyalty startup he co-founded. Coert’s work centers on how information moves between people and how technology can make those interactions more seamless and impactful.

Aileen Allen

Aileen Allen is a Partner at Mercury Fund, where she focuses on agentic commerce and the future of buying behavior. With over 15 years of experience in B2B software across marketing, growth, and go-to-market strategy, she works closely with founders to scale revenue and bring new products to market.

For More Information:

Produced by Speakerbox Media. For more episodes, visit Mercuryfund.com/content

Stay Connected:

● https://www.linkedin.com/in/bgarrou

● https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattsuma

● https://www.linkedin.com/in/coert-voorhees

● https://www.linkedin.com/in/aileen-allen