In this episode, we sit down with Michele Fisher (Global Director, Business Strategy for Retail & CPG) and Atanu Ghosh (Director of Agentic Commerce & AI Innovation), who sit at the intersection of Azure AI, Copilot, and real-world retail and brand Agentic Commerce implementations.

This conversation dives into how Microsoft is thinking about agentic commerce as a full operating model shift, not just a feature or channel.

From Copilot shopping to data infrastructure to ads inside LLMs, the discussion connects the dots between:

Highlights

Conversational discovery is fundamentally different from search: The way people talk about brands inside AI systems looks nothing like traditional keyword behavior, and most companies have zero visibility into it.
Agentic commerce is not one thing, it’s an operating model shift: Microsoft defines it broadly: agents participating in discovery, decision-making, and transactions, not just checkout.
Copilot + catalog + data = the new commerce stack
Ads are changing from persuasion to evaluation: Agents don’t care about creative. They evaluate structured data, trust signals, and relevance.
Loyalty becomes infrastructure, not a program
The “frontier firm” is the North Star: A future where humans and agents work together across workflows, not just AI acting as an assistant.
Protocols like UCP matter more than people realize: Open standards enable discoverability across surfaces and prevent fragmentation in agent-driven ecosystems.
The funnel is collapsing

If your brand is still thinking about traffic as the starting point, you’re already behind.
In an agentic world, discovery happens before you ever see the user, and increasingly, without them.

Timestamps

00:00 – Why brands have zero visibility into conversational discovery
01:50 – Scot’s “Big 6” podcast goal and Microsoft joins the list
04:00 – Michelle & Atanu backgrounds + roles at Microsoft
10:00 – What agentic commerce actually means (and why definitions vary)
14:00 – Microsoft’s agentic commerce stack: Copilot, agents, data layer
18:00 – The “Frontier Firm” and human + agent workflows
20:00 – UCP, protocols, and why openness matters
23:00 – Loyalty, identity, and friction in agent checkout
28:00 – Ads in agentic commerce: from persuasion to evaluation
33:00 – First-party data vs. conversational behavior data
39:00 – Why most retailers aren’t ready (and what they need first)
45:00 – The real blocker: operating models, not technology
46:30 – Where to learn more + how leaders are consuming information now

👉 Connect with Michele: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelekfisher/
👉 Connect with Atanu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/buildingai/
👉 Learn more about Microsoft in AI: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azure-ai-foundry-blog/the-future-of-ai-harnessing-ai-for-e-commerce---personalized-shopping-agents/4386980

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