🚨Well, I'm taking the leap... I’m launching an independent media company, The Aisle (@ReadTheAisle), dedicated to in-depth reporting on the AI era of commerce. Whether you call it agentic, conversational, or AI-powered commerce, what's clear to me is that we’re on the cusp of the biggest shift in how the world buys and sells in decades. The Aisle will publish weekly, in-depth stories + exclusive interviews, and jump on scoops and breaking analysis when news demands it. The newsletter is powered by @beehiiv's Media Collective. The Aisle is backed by my 12 years covering tech + commerce and the deep network I’ve built across retail and Silicon Valley. It’s for: • Leaders at brands + retailers navigating what AI means for their customers...and their business • Builders inside AI labs, tech giants, and startups reinventing online shopping • Investors backing this next wave The first issue hits paid subscribers this Thursday. 👉 Subscribe: readtheaisle.com/join I can't wait to show you what I've been working on. I'm thrilled I'll continue hosting events with Fortune—more to come on my gratitude for that amazing crew—including Brainstorm AI in San Francisco this December. But I'm ready now to also build a company and community of my own. If you or your org wants to collaborate, sponsor, or bring me in to speak about this transformation, my DMs are open.

More from my magazine feature here: bit.ly/47hpn8s

Smart write-in voters 😎

Meta announcing a bunch of major retailers integrating with Muse like Walmart and Best Buy reminds me a bit of Google's anti-Amazon alliance built around Google Home and voice commerce a decade ago. Amazon didn't need Google then. And it doesn't need Meta's Muse now. I explain in my latest @ReadTheAisle newsletter: readtheaisle.com/p/amazon-me…

Some helpful context on the new Amazon v Meta/Muse battle that you'd already know if you subscribed to @ReadTheAisle 😎 1. Amazon already has its own AI shopping agent called Buy for Me. The company hasn't marketed it heavily yet (maybe because it does some of the things that Amazon is trying to stop other AI agents from doing?) 2. Amazon last year sued Perplexity over the AI startup's Comet AI agent that some Amazon customers were using to shop on their behalf. An appeals court recently sided with Perplexity (after a lower court had previously ruled in favor of Amazon to temporarily ban Comet from accessing Amazon for shoppers). 3. On Monday, Amazon amended its complaint against Perplexity accusing Perplexity of misleading the appeals court. Perplexity had told the court its own servers never directly touched Amazon's and that everything happened in the customer's browser. But Amazon says that's false and that on iOS, Perplexity's servers logged into Amazon themselves using customers' sign-in cookies. We'll see if this case makes it to trial. Would be shocked if Amazon sues Meta but this is the era of crazy first times. More in The Aisle this week...

Not only is Amazon blocking Meta's new @Muse AI personal agent, today it filed an amended complaint against Perplexity in an ongoing lawsuit over its Comet AI browser. Coincidence or intentional timing? Amazon is claiming that when Comet users on iOS shopped Amazon, Perplexity's own computers logged in with the customers' credentials--potentially contradicting what Perplexity told the appeals court: courtlistener.com/docket/718…

Amazon redefined retail, reshaped countless businesses. Now at risk itself from ai shopping agents like Instinct and Muse, which threaten to turn it into a brandless logistics company. Discussed with @DelRey last week. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…

Man, this was fun. Peter is a close friend, yes. But also one of my favorite interviewers on the planet. Bonus...free month-long trial to The Aisle for Channels listeners: tinyurl.com/The-Aisle-Channe…

Had a question for Instinct

All this personal AI agent talk and no mentions of Alexa+ ...which was completely overhauled specifically so it would be capable of actions. A problem for Amazon or an opportunity?

(Checks social media from paternity leave)

The good thing about running your own business is that every day feels like the day after Labor Day The bad thing about running your own business is that every day feels like the day after Labor Day

I think we should all agree that Clippers fans can enter unrestricted fan free agency until the start of the season. If they want to jump ship to a new team they have one-time amnesty.

I've long found B-to-C commerce storylines more compelling than B-to-B. But AI agents are starting to change how businesses buy from each other too, not just how consumers discover products and shop...and that's making wholesale a lot more interesting to me. Case in point: I sat down with Faire co-founder/CEO @MaxRhodesOK, who told me "old-school AI," not LLMs, is actually the biggest driver behind the wholesale marketplace's ~40% revenue growth. He also walked me through where LLMs are earning their keep, where they still fall short, and what has to change before he trusts one to build the "holy grail" tool he wants for retailers. Plus, his candid take on the pros and cons of the AI coding boom. At a moment when every exec wants to sound like they've got AI all figured out, Rhodes was refreshingly blunt. At one point, reflecting on years of branding Faire as AI-powered before the tech could back it up, he laughed and said: "We've been an AI-powered marketplace for a decade" — but now they finally are. Full Q&A in the latest issue of @ReadTheAisle: readtheaisle.com/p/the-ai-tr…

Fun fact: started my career as a sports journalist in Hudson County, NJ and was based out of an office in Bayonne for a stretch. This team would have been a lot of fun to cover

As someone who spent years writing about e-commerce before I started covering AI, I’ve been fascinated by how AI shopping has evolved. And I have a personal stake in it: I hate shopping. So I couldn’t wait to see whether AI could make the experience better, and I’ve been experimenting with shopping in ChatGPT ever since. That’s why I was so keen to have my former Fortune colleague @DelRey on the Ground Level AI Podcast. Now the founder of @ReadTheAisle, Jason has been covering retail and e-commerce for well over a decade and is the author of Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets. He is my go-to for all things AI and shopping. One of the biggest themes of our conversation was just how much the expectations around AI shopping have shifted over the past year. Jason launched The Aisle in part because retail executives, e-commerce leaders and people inside AI labs were convinced AI would bring the biggest disruption to online shopping since mobile commerce—or perhaps even Amazon Prime. But nine months later, the picture looks more complicated. Consumers really are turning to ChatGPT and other AI tools for product research and discovery, Jason said. What’s less clear is whether they want to hand over the actual decision-making and purchasing to agents. Watch the full episode: groundlevel-ai.com/p/ground-…

And still laid off entry-level season ticket reps in the last month?

imagine saying these words with a straight face "First off, congratulations. Great quarter, I mean, absolutely fantastic. Congrats."

I'm still amazed when I see a smart person use 100% AI writing in a way that makes them sound dumber.

Amazon doesn’t talk much about the story behind Rufus, its AI shopping assistant now known as Alexa for Shopping. So I was glad when @mukeshj , one of the former product architects behind it, agreed to walk me through from his vantage point. Jain spent eight years at Amazon, and led science, engineering, and product for Rufus before leaving last year. In our conversation for @ReadTheAisle, he talked through what changed when Amazon moved from keyword search to conversational shopping, what different AI placements do for different customers, and what the data from conversational interactions taught his team that keyword search couldn’t. I also loved his point of view on where startups actually have a shot. Big AI labs and big retailers both have obvious advantages: models, distribution, catalog depth. But Jain talked through where a smaller, more focused player might be able to create advantages over both. If you’re building in AI commerce, or just trying to understand where this space is headed, I think you’ll get a lot out of it. readtheaisle.com/p/amazon-ru…

The most overused phrase in startup land: democratize