TD SYNNEX is expanding its PartnerFirst digital commerce platform with artificial intelligence, sales automation and new integrations as the technology distributor moves to connect more of its pricing, inventory, and customer data directly with the systems its resellers use to run their businesses.

The Fremont, California, and Clearwater, Florida-based distributor said PartnerFirst Digital Bridge now connects with Salesforce and QuickBooks Online, providing real-time access to pricing, inventory, orders, and customer lifecycle data.

TD SYNNEX is also expanding the reach of artificial intelligence assistants that can perform routine sales and customer service functions. After initially launching an AI assistant in Microsoft Teams, the distributor has added assistants to Slack and Webex.

Slack users can check real-time product pricing and availability. Through Webex, customers can check price and availability, look up order status, find their assigned TD SYNNEX contacts, and retrieve vendor-specific information.

The additions are part of a broader effort by TD SYNNEX to make its ecommerce and distribution systems accessible from the business applications its customers already use rather than requiring them to repeatedly move between separate platforms.

“Partners don’t need more dashboards. They need better methods to help them identify opportunities sooner, act faster and grow profitably,” said Reyna Thompson, president of North America at TD SYNNEX.

PartnerFirst, introduced in North America in September 2025, was designed to consolidate TD SYNNEX’s commerce, cloud, renewals, and other digital capabilities into a more unified customer platform. The latest additions extend that strategy deeper into sales, customer management, and purchasing workflows.

TD SYNNEX has added customer lifecycle analysis for select vendors, including Microsoft and Cisco. The tools provide reporting on opportunities by quantity and value and combine TD SYNNEX data with individual reseller profiles.

New campaign management capabilities allow partners to target and track communications with resellers and end customers. Opportunity reconciliation tools track close rates, revenue retention, renewals, upselling, and customer churn.

The distributor has also expanded cloud capabilities within PartnerFirst. Customers can see cloud customer data and contracts through subscription tools and use a unified quoting system with reporting and analytics.

Another new tool, QuoteSync, moves PartnerFirst quotes and related information directly into connected customer relationship management and professional services automation systems. TD SYNNEX said the integration is designed to reduce manual and duplicate data entry during the quoting process.

The company said customers making regular use of its digital offerings are seeing nearly 30% growth on average.

“We are seeing immediate impact on customer growth as they leverage PartnerFirst and Digital Bridge,” said Jessica McDowell, senior vice president of North America marketing and digital success at TD SYNNEX. “Customers that are regularly transacting across our digital offerings are seeing nearly 30 percent growth on average, outpacing customers not leveraging digital solutions.”

TD SYNNEX did not disclose the number of customers included in that comparison, the period over which the growth was measured or the average growth rate of customers that do not extensively use the digital tools.

The distributor is also expanding PartnerFirst beyond product transactions.

A new Services Marketplace allows customers to search for information technology services, review service information and submit inquiries through the platform. Available offerings include integration, installation, and managed services. The marketplace includes AI-powered search to help customers identify services and stock-keeping units.

Customers can also purchase products and monitor renewals through TD SYNNEX’s PartnerFirst mobile app for Apple iOS and Android devices.

The expansion is the latest step in TD SYNNEX’s effort to make its distribution platform more intricately connected to customers’ sales and operating systems.

The company introduced PartnerFirst in North America last September as a unified digital platform combining hardware, cloud, renewals, and other services. It has since expanded the platform internationally and continued adding automation and AI capabilities.

The significance for TD SYNNEX extends beyond adding another set of ecommerce features. By connecting pricing, inventory, orders, customer information, quotes, and renewals directly to Salesforce, QuickBooks Online and communications platforms, the distributor is positioning its systems deeper inside the day-to-day workflows of its reseller customers.

TD SYNNEX supports more than 150,000 customers in more than 100 countries. Its distribution business provides information technology hardware, software, and systems, while its Hyve Solutions business designs and manufactures computing, cloud, and connected infrastructure.

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TrueCommerce has named Anthony Gallo chief product officer as the supply chain technology provider expands its use of artificial intelligence across its platform.

Pittsburgh-based TrueCommerce said Gallo will oversee product strategy, management, and design, with priorities including AI-based B2B commerce, enterprise system integration, and data governance.

TrueCommerce operates a global supply chain network that processes 600 million transactions annually and connects businesses with trading partners in more than 40 countries, according to the company.

The company is working to combine data from that network with customers’ enterprise resource planning systems and AI to automate more supply chain and B2B commerce processes.

Gallo joins TrueCommerce from supply chain software company Kinaxis, where he was vice president of product management and platform innovation. He previously served as chief product officer at Tenovos and held product leadership roles at OpenText.

TrueCommerce provides electronic data interchange, supply chain integration, e-invoicing and related services connecting businesses with customers, suppliers, logistics providers, and internal systems.

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Amazon Business launched in 2015 and made about $1 billion in its first year. Today’s announcement puts it at $60 billion, up from $35 billion just four years ago. (That’s gross sales volume flowing through the platform, including third-party sellers, not Amazon’s own revenue. The press will conflate the two; you shouldn’t.) I read that number as a warning to the distribution industry: A new business model is replacing the old one, but only in some sectors and only for some transactions and distributors.

For simple products bought through simple transactions, three capabilities decide who wins: wide assortment, easy ordering, and fast delivery. Nobody beats Amazon Business on those three across as many categories and geographies. For complex products and transactions — where the customer needs selection assistance, fabrication, kitting, cutting, technical support, jobsite coordination, or commissioning — traditional distributors still offer the best solution, and it’s not close.

The line between the two models is human involvement. Amazon engineered its model, so people rarely touch a transaction. People are variable cost, and Amazon is built to avoid variable cost — or, better yet, to charge someone else for it. Amazon has said more than half of Amazon Business sales come from third-party sellers.

Amazon keeps the information flowing, the customer relationship, the data, and the commission, and passes the physical flow and its costs to the seller. And when Amazon does handle fulfillment, it doesn’t absorb the variable cost; it sells fulfillment back to the seller as a service, at Amazon’s price. Amazon split the transaction in half, kept the profitable part, and turned the other half into a revenue stream.

Here’s something most distributors get wrong. For 30 years I’ve watched distributors chase online sales as though a higher share of website revenue was automatically better. It isn’t.

Ask a harder question: How much of your revenue comes from self-service orders of products anyone could stock? That number is a proxy for your vulnerability to Amazon Business because those are the orders where the customer needed your inventory but didn’t need you. Digital sales embedded in the customer’s operations — managed inventory, VMI and jobsite logistics — are a different story. The channel isn’t the moat; being inside the customer’s workflow is, though today’s announcement shows Amazon is filling in that moat, too. You absolutely need state-of-the-art digital capabilities. That’s table stakes now. But when distributors dumb down their value propositions to drive up online sales, they move their businesses into the bull’s-eye of where Amazon is strongest.

Complexity Is a Moving Target

The wallet-share erosion isn’t easy to measure. Customers cherry-pick. They keep buying complex items from you while the easy orders shift to Amazon. That high-margin, tail-spend business is funding your delivery route density and absorbing your fixed costs. You’ll lose the profitability of the account long before you lose the account.

One more thing: The complexity line doesn’t hold still. AI moves it every year, and Amazon is a technology company that happens to sell products. Product selection that used to require a rep’s expertise is increasingly handled by software. Amazon is building those tools right now. Complexity is a moat for you only if you keep deepening it. The good news is that AI cuts both ways. It’s also the best tool distributors have ever had for delivering complex, high-touch service at a cost the model can finally afford.

No one has credibly sized the U.S. wholesale market by complex versus simple, but in an $8 trillion industry, both categories are enormous. Expect Amazon to keep adding AI-enabled capabilities — configurators, virtual technical support, and tools we haven’t seen yet — that reclassify “complex” as “simple,” making a growing share of the total easy to order online.

Today’s announcement names the tools already shipping: an AI buying assistant, AI-driven savings insights, spend-anomaly monitoring, and guided buying. And it’s not only software. Amazon is rolling out dedicated business delivery fleets with scheduled windows and palletized drop-offs, attacking the physical complexity that used to belong to distributors alone.

Scale Changes the Equation

Amazon Business has one more scale advantage. Most distributors operate in one country or a few. Amazon Business is active in 11, a combined wholesale market worth double-digit trillions. And that scale compounds. Amazon amortizes every dollar of technology and AI investment across 11 markets at once, while most distributors amortize theirs across one. That’s why the capability gap can widen even while you’re investing. No wonder Amazon is pursuing this opportunity so aggressively.

So, what should distributors take from today’s number? Keep it in perspective. Sixty billion dollars is still a small slice of a multitrillion-dollar industry. But it was $1 billion 10 years ago. Three moves matter:

• Build state-of-the-art digital capabilities, including AI, not to maximize online revenue but to meet customers wherever the transaction belongs.
• Make complexity your strategy, not your legacy. Add services, integration, and technical depth faster than technology commoditizes them.
• Watch your mix. If self-service sales of undifferentiated products are your fastest-growing segment, you’re growing the part of your business Amazon takes first.

The distributors that thrive alongside a $60 billion Amazon Business will be the ones that stopped trying to out-Amazon Amazon and made themselves too complicated to replace.

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Amazon Business has reached an annualized gross merchandise value of $60 billion, another milestone in the company’s decade-long expansion into B2B commerce and a sign of its growing influence over how organizations purchase products.

Amazon announced Tuesday that Amazon Business now serves more than 11 million organizations worldwide, including 1.8 million customers added during the first half of 2026.

The $60 billion figure represents gross merchandise value, or GMV — the total value of products sold through the Amazon Business marketplace — not Amazon’s revenue. Because much of that volume comes from third-party sellers, Amazon records revenue from commissions, fulfillment, advertising, logistics and related services rather than the full value of every transaction.

That distinction is important. Traditional distributors report sales based on products they purchase and resell, making direct comparisons with Amazon Business misleading. Even so, the milestone underscores Amazon’s growing role as one of the world’s largest B2B purchasing platforms.

Amazon Business launched in 2015 and surpassed $1 billion in annualized GMV within its first year. It exceeded $10 billion in 2018 and reached $35 billion in 2022. Tuesday’s announcement marks the first public update since then, reflecting several years of steady expansion rather than a single year of explosive growth.

The announcement also highlights how Amazon Business has evolved beyond an online marketplace.

Today, the platform combines marketplace commerce, procurement software, logistics services, financing, and artificial intelligence into a single purchasing ecosystem. Customers can automate replenishment, manage purchasing approvals, analyze spending and access freight, warehousing, and fulfillment services through Amazon’s growing logistics network.

For distributors, the significance extends well beyond the headline number.

Amazon continues to strengthen its position in categories where purchasing decisions are driven primarily by price, broad product selection, and delivery speed. Maintenance, repair and operations products, office supplies, janitorial and sanitation products, breakroom supplies, repair tools, and other standardized items align closely with Amazon’s operating model because they require little technical support and are purchased repeatedly throughout the year.

The company said product selection increased 30% over the past year, led by repair tools, office furniture, and grocery products. More than 85% of U.S. business customers now have access to pallet deliveries, while more than 70% of Prime Business orders in the United States arrive the same day or the next day.

Those investments continue to raise the competitive bar for distributors serving highly transactional markets.

The competitive landscape changes in more technical sectors.

Many industrial and specialty distributors compete less on price than on engineering expertise, application support, and value-added services. Customers purchasing industrial automation systems, flow-control equipment, electrical products, process systems, and specialized construction materials often require product configuration, engineering assistance, fabrication, regulatory documentation, or project management before placing an order.

Many distributors also differentiate themselves through vendor-managed inventory, custom kitting, jobsite delivery, commissioning, field service, and other specialized capabilities that extend well beyond product fulfillment.

Those services remain difficult to replicate through a marketplace model, regardless of how sophisticated the technology becomes.

Amazon is also broadening the competitive battlefield by investing heavily in procurement technology.

Its generative AI-powered Amazon Business Assistant helps purchasing teams identify products and manage buying activities, while spending analytics and anomaly detection tools are designed to improve purchasing controls, identify unusual spending patterns and uncover cost-saving opportunities.

The strategy reflects a broader ambition than simply selling products.

Amazon is increasingly positioning Amazon Business as the platform companies use to manage procurement itself, embedding the service deeper into customers’ purchasing workflows rather than competing only for individual orders.

That represents a different competitive challenge for distributors. Business customers increasingly evaluate suppliers not only on price and product availability but also on digital purchasing capabilities, procurement integration, workflow automation, spend visibility and the overall buying experience.

The announcement also reflects broader changes in business purchasing behavior.

Organizations increasingly expect the same search, ordering and delivery experience they receive as consumers. Those expectations continue reshaping wholesale distribution and forcing distributors to invest in digital commerce, procurement integration and AI-enabled customer experiences alongside their traditional sales and service capabilities.

Amazon rarely discloses financial milestones for Amazon Business, making the $60 billion announcement a notable indication of the business unit’s strategic importance.

For distributors, however, the biggest takeaway is not the size of Amazon Business, but where the company is winning.

Amazon remains strongest in high-volume, standardized product categories where transactions can be automated, fulfillment optimized and purchasing decisions require little human involvement. Those markets are likely to face increasing competitive pressure as Amazon expands its marketplace, logistics network, and AI-powered procurement tools.

The outlook is different for distributors serving more complex markets.

Products requiring technical expertise, engineering support, customization, fabrication, field service, and project management continue to favor distributors that create value beyond simply delivering inventory. In those markets, relationships, application knowledge, and specialized services remain difficult to automate and continue to differentiate traditional distributors from digital marketplaces.

The $60 billion GMV milestone is therefore more than a measure of Amazon Business’ scale. It is another sign that business purchasing is becoming increasingly digital, automated and data driven. For distributors, the challenge is not to match Amazon in every category, but to understand where Amazon’s model is strongest, where their own competitive advantages remain intact and where continued investment in digital capabilities has become essential to protecting market share.

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Graybar and BradyPLUS are among 10 suppliers added to OMNIA Partners’ public-sector e-commerce marketplace, expanding the platform to more than 8 million products and giving distributors broader access to government, education, and nonprofit buyers.

The expansion, announced Tuesday, also includes SHI, Fisher Scientific, School Specialty, Insight Public Sector, Johnson-Lancaster & Associates, Vari, Mediatechnologies and E-Z-GO/Cushman. Together, the additions broaden the marketplace across 200 product categories, including electrical, industrial, information technology, laboratory supplies, foodservice equipment, facility maintenance, and workplace furnishings.

Suppliers will sell through OPUS, OMNIA Partners’ procurement platform, which allows government agencies, schools, higher education institutions, and nonprofit organizations to purchase products from multiple suppliers through a single online shopping cart using competitively bid cooperative purchasing contracts.

OMNIA Partners said 40,000 public-sector procurement professionals now use the platform, which launched in April 2024. The company said OPUS connects buyers with more than 650 suppliers and is designed to simplify purchasing by reducing the time required to identify suppliers, compare pricing, and verify contract compliance.

Along with the supplier expansion, OMNIA Partners introduced new platform capabilities, including enhanced search, streamlined access to supplier contracts, a centralized W-9 document library, integrated chat support, shareable product lists, and expanded purchasing approval tools.

This announcement highlights how digital procurement marketplaces are becoming a more important route to market for wholesale distributors. As public-sector buyers continue shifting purchasing online, distributors are increasingly competing on digital capabilities alongside product selection, pricing, and service.

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DHL eCommerce and the U.S. Postal Service have signed an exclusive multi-year agreement for last-mile parcel delivery services in the United States, a contract valued at more than $10 billion and the largest deal in the companies’ 25-year relationship.

The agreement expands an existing partnership in which DHL eCommerce manages package pickup, sorting, and transportation through its national network before transferring shipments to USPS for final delivery.

Under the arrangement, DHL eCommerce will continue to process parcels through its network of 19 automated distribution hubs and transport them through its air and ground systems. USPS will complete deliveries to more than 170 million addresses across more than 41,000 ZIP codes nationwide.

The deal provides DHL eCommerce with long-term access to one of the country’s largest delivery networks as it seeks to expand its U.S. parcel business amid continued growth in ecommerce shipping volumes.

“This agreement creates a dependable, long-term platform for our customers,” Scott Ashbaugh, CEO of DHL eCommerce Americas, said in a statement. “Working with USPS allows us to serve communities nationwide in a highly efficient way.”

For USPS, the agreement adds a significant source of commercial parcel volume as the agency continues efforts to grow revenue and increase utilization of its delivery network.

“This extended and exclusive agreement reflects a shared commitment to innovation, operational alignment and delivering greater value to the shipping marketplace,” Postmaster General and CEO David Steiner said in a statement.

The contract deepens ties between the two organizations at a time when competition for parcel volume remains intense. Carriers continue to invest heavily in automation, transportation networks and last-mile capabilities as they compete for ecommerce shipments.

DHL eCommerce, a division of DHL Group, focuses primarily on medium- and high-volume ecommerce retailers and brands. The company has been expanding its domestic and cross-border shipping capabilities as retailers seek alternatives to traditional parcel carriers.

The agreement also reinforces USPS’ role as a major logistics provider despite ongoing financial challenges and increasing competition from private-sector carriers. The Postal Service’s nationwide delivery network remains a key asset for parcel companies seeking broad geographic coverage without building their own last-mile infrastructure.

For distributors, the deal could have implications beyond the parcel sector. A long-term exclusive partnership between DHL eCommerce and USPS may improve network stability, service consistency, and pricing predictability for high-volume shippers, particularly distributors that rely on parcel delivery for ecommerce orders, direct shipments to contractors and end users, or replenishment of branch locations.

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W.W. Grainger is embedding artificial intelligence across customer service, finance, warehouse operations, and ecommerce as the company expands AI from isolated applications into core business infrastructure, chairman and CEO DG. Macpherson told analysts during the company’s recent first-quarter earnings call.

Macpherson said Grainger’s AI deployments now fall into two primary categories: internal productivity and customer-facing digital capabilities.

On the operational side, the company is using AI tools to support customer service agents, automate finance and back-office workflows and improve supply chain execution inside distribution centers. Macpherson said Grainger is also applying AI to drive more “one-piece flow” within warehouse operations, an approach designed to improve throughput and operational efficiency.

The second category focuses on ecommerce and customer experience. Macpherson said AI-powered search and merchandising enhancements are becoming increasingly important to Grainger’s long-term competitive position.

“It is pervasive and will be even more so,” Macpherson said. “Pointing at the right things to create advantage, in addition to driving productivity, is really important.”

Macpherson also pointed to AI initiatives at Zoro, Grainger’s endless-assortment ecommerce business, which reported 18.7% daily sales growth in the first quarter.

He said the Zoro team has focused on improving customer acquisition quality and increasing repeat purchases, with AI-enabled website improvements expected to drive additional margin expansion and revenue growth over time. Macpherson said those enhancements were not yet fully reflected in first-quarter financial results but are expected to contribute more materially as deployment expands.

The AI discussion came during a strong earnings quarter for Grainger. Grainger reported higher first quarter sales and earnings as growth in its North American operations and digital businesses offset continued tariff and geopolitical uncertainty.

The Chicago-based distributor said first quarter sales increased 10.1% year over year to $4.74 billion, up from $4.31 billion in the same period last year. Net earnings attributable to the company rose 15.9% to $555 million from $479 million a year earlier.

Operating earnings increased 18.0% to $793 million from $672 million in the prior-year quarter, while gross profit rose 10.9% to $1.90 billion from $1.71 billion.

Jonny LeRoy, Grainger senior vice president and chief technology officer, will deliver the closing keynote on June 25 from 11:15 to noon at Distribution Strategy Group’s Applied AI for Distributors conference

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Amazon Business is expanding same day grocery delivery for commercial customers in more than 2,300 U.S. cities and towns, adding fresh food and perishable products to its growing business procurement platform.

The company said businesses can now order thousands of grocery items, including dairy products, produce, baked goods and frozen foods, alongside office, janitorial and operational supplies already available through Amazon Business.

The expansion marks Amazon’s latest move to increase its presence in commercial purchasing and workplace replenishment while extending its reach into food distribution and delivery services.

Amazon said the service targets businesses such as offices, schools, gyms, and salons that regularly purchase food and breakroom supplies for employees, customers, and events. Customers can combine grocery and operational purchases into a single order and receive delivery within hours, according to the company.

“We’re continuously innovating to make business buying simpler, faster, and more cost-effective for our customers,” Shelley Salomon, vice president of Amazon Business, said in the announcement.

Amazon said business customers had requested an easier way to purchase groceries alongside everyday operating supplies. The company said organizations can now order products such as printer ink, copy paper, milk, and fresh fruit in a single transaction through one checkout process.

The rollout also expands Amazon’s broader logistics and fulfillment operations. The company said it is using its temperature-controlled grocery fulfillment network and a six-point quality inspection process to support the service.

Business Prime members receive free same day grocery delivery on orders above $25 in most markets, while nonmembers pay a $12.99 delivery fee, Amazon said.

Amazon Business has become a major part of Amazon’s commercial operations. The company said the division now generates more than $35 billion in annualized gross sales and serves more than 8 million organizations globally, including 97 of the Fortune 100.

The grocery expansion follows Amazon’s recent launch of Amazon Supply Chain Services, which opens the company’s freight, fulfillment, and parcel delivery network to outside businesses.

Taken together, the initiatives show Amazon continuing to expand beyond ecommerce into logistics, replenishment and supply chain services traditionally handled by wholesale distributors and foodservice suppliers.

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Amazon Business is executing the most consequential expansion of its artificial intelligence capabilities since the platform launched a decade ago, rolling out a suite of AI-powered procurement tools, deploying agentic buying features that complete purchases on behalf of customers and committing to a $50 billion partnership with OpenAI that positions its AWS infrastructure as the backbone of enterprise AI for years ahead. For wholesale distributors, the cumulative effect of those moves is a competitive environment that is structurally different from the one that existed 12 months ago.

The platform now serves more than 8 million organizations worldwide and generates more than $35 billion in annualized gross merchandise value. All its new AI tools are built on Amazon Bedrock, the company’s managed generative AI service on AWS.

The Procurement AI Stack

The centerpiece of Amazon Business’s current AI deployment is the Amazon Business Assistant, a conversational AI tool available to U.S. customers at no additional cost. The assistant guides buyers through account setup, purchasing questions and savings opportunities in real time, drawing on past purchase data and account settings to recommend more efficient buying options. It learns from interactions and feedback over time and operates as an always-on support layer embedded in the buying workflow.

Paired with the assistant is Savings Insights, available to Business Prime members, which uses AI and large language models to analyze purchasing patterns and surface cost-saving recommendations — including bulk purchase opportunities, lower-priced seller alternatives, and Subscribe & Save options. For Business Prime Enterprise and Unlimited customers, Spend Anomaly Monitoring is now live, automatically flagging irregular spending behavior such as out-of-policy purchases, unusual categories or transactions structured to avoid approval thresholds.

Doug Gray, vice president of technology for Amazon Business, framed the design philosophy plainly. “Businesses need AI’s speed, without losing control,” Gray said. “We use AI to keep you in the driver’s seat, automating manual processes and making it easier to do your job.”

In collaboration with Deloitte and AWS, Amazon Business also introduced two AI-driven industry solutions built on Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker — one targeting industrial manufacturers, the other U.S. utility organizations. The industrial manufacturing solution, launching to select manufacturers in early 2026 and expanding to broader industrial sectors later in the year, uses AI agents to predict inventory disruptions, assess supplier quality and recommend corrective actions such as reallocating parts or expediting shipments. The utility solution applies predictive modeling, diagnostics, and geospatial analysis to forecast equipment replacements and grid reliability needs following severe weather events.

Both solutions are built on Deloitte’s IntelligentOps platform and are designed to shift users from reactive problem-solving to proactive decision-making — precisely the value proposition that MRO and industrial distributors have long delivered through direct account relationships.

Buy for Me and the Agentic Purchasing Layer

The most structurally significant development for distributors is not the procurement tooling, but the agentic commerce infrastructure Amazon has been building around it.

On March 11, Amazon announced a major expansion of its Shop Direct program, which allows customers to discover and purchase products from external merchant websites directly through Amazon — even when those products are not sold on the Amazon marketplace. The expanded program now includes more than 100 million products from more than 400,000 merchants. Merchants connect through established feed syndicators including Feedonomics, Salsify and CEDCommerce, enabling real-time synchronization of catalog data, pricing and inventory with Amazon’s search and AI systems.

For qualifying products, customers can use Buy for Me — a feature in which Amazon’s AI agent, powered by its Rufus shopping assistant, completes the purchase on the customer’s behalf from the merchant’s own website, using stored Amazon payment and shipping information. Orders appear in the Amazon interface under a dedicated Buy for Me tab. The merchant handles fulfillment, returns, and customer service.

“Product feeds give merchants a streamlined way to reach Amazon customers who are searching for their products,” said Amanda Doerr, vice president of Core Shopping at Amazon.

The competitive implications of that infrastructure for distributors selling through their own ecommerce channels are significant. Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, was credited by Amazon with an estimated $10 billion lift in annualized sales in late 2025. The assistant draws on Amazon’s deep purchase history, product data, and catalog breadth to route customers to products — and now, through Buy for Me, to complete transactions on external sites on their behalf.

Amazon is simultaneously restricting third-party AI agents from accessing its platform while expanding its own reach outward. On March 9, 2026 — two days before the Shop Direct feed announcement — a federal court granted Amazon a preliminary injunction against Perplexity’s Comet browser, blocking the AI startup’s agents from accessing Amazon accounts. The legal move signals that Amazon intends to control the agentic purchasing layer on its platform, not cede it to independent AI operators.

The OpenAI Partnership Raises the Stakes Further

The strategic context sharpened on Feb. 27, when Amazon and OpenAI announced a multi-year partnership that includes a $50 billion investment from Amazon and the co-development of a Stateful Runtime Environment for Amazon Bedrock. The runtime environment will allow AI agents to maintain context, remember prior work and act across multiple systems over time. AWS will serve as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, which enables organizations to build, deploy and manage teams of AI agents across enterprise systems.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, in his April 2026 annual shareholder letter, said the company’s AI revenue in its cloud computing segment has hit a $15 billion annual run rate and defended the company’s plan to spend approximately $200 billion in capital expenditures in 2026 — the largest such commitment in the company’s history — with the lion’s share directed at AI infrastructure.

For wholesale distributors, the OpenAI partnership matters because it expands the AI capability set available to Amazon Business and its enterprise customers. An AI agent architecture that can maintain context across procurement workflows, manage multi-step purchasing decisions and operate across ERP systems and ecommerce platforms is exactly the infrastructure that makes autonomous B2B procurement viable at scale.

What Distributors Are Up Against

The tools Amazon Business is deploying — spend anomaly detection, AI-guided savings recommendations, predictive procurement for industrial manufacturers, and an agentic checkout layer operating across 100 million external products — are designed to tighten buyer control over purchasing decisions and reduce the friction that has historically given distributor sales reps their opening.

Instead of a human buyer navigating a distributor’s ecommerce site or contacting an inside sales rep, an AI system can now evaluate suppliers across Amazon’s growing product universe and, in an increasing number of cases, complete the transaction autonomously. That shift makes structured product data, real-time inventory visibility, and competitive pricing the primary determinants of whether a distributor appears in an AI-driven sourcing query at all — not the relationship, not the rep, and not the catalog experience built on the distributor’s own platform.

Distributors that maintain detailed product information and accessible APIs may be more likely to appear in automated sourcing queries generated by AI purchasing systems. Conversely, incomplete, or inconsistent product data could make it harder for AI agents to evaluate supplier offerings.

Agentic commerce is still in initial stages, and most B2B purchases in wholesale distribution are still initiated by human buyers. But Amazon Business is generating more than $35 billion in annualized GMV, operating in 11 countries, and committing $200 billion in capital to the AI infrastructure that powers it. The window for distributors to make structural investments in data quality, digital accessibility and ecommerce performance is narrowing — and the pace of Amazon’s moves in 2026 suggests it has no intention of slowing down.

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Commerce.com Inc., a provider of enterprise ecommerce software and digital commerce infrastructure, has rejected a second unsolicited all-stock acquisition proposal from Rezolve AI PLC, an artificial intelligence company focused on transaction and payment technologies — as both companies target the wholesale distribution and B2B ecommerce markets for aggressive growth.

Commerce.com operates an open SaaS ecommerce platform used by more than 60,000 merchants globally, including manufacturers, brands, and distributors. Its technology stack includes storefront software, product information and feed management tools (via Feedonomics), and content management capabilities (via Makeswift), enabling businesses to manage catalogs, pricing, inventory and omnichannel selling.

Rezolve AI develops AI-driven commerce and payment systems designed to automate search, product discovery, transactions, and fulfillment. Its platform, which includes its Brain Suite and RezolvePay products, is built to support what the company describes as “agentic commerce,” where AI systems guide or execute purchasing decisions on behalf of users.

On April 8, Commerce.com’s board said Rezolve AI’s latest offer — a stock exchange of one Rezolve share for every two Commerce.com shares — significantly undervalued the company and did not warrant further engagement. The terms implied a 47% discount to Commerce.com’s share price based on Rezolve AI’s April 7 closing price of $2.88.

The rejection follows a similar decision in February, when Commerce.com declined an earlier one-for-one share exchange proposal that implied a 29% discount.

After being rebuffed again, Rezolve AI appealed directly to shareholders, criticizing Commerce.com’s performance since its 2020 IPO and arguing that a combination would unlock greater value. “We have been transparent with the Commerce.com board, but they have chosen not to engage while their shareholders suffer through decline,” said Daniel M. Wagner, chairman and CEO of Rezolve AI.

Rezolve AI said it expects $360 million in 2026 revenue and cited $232 million in contracted revenue entering the year. It also said its infrastructure processed 112.7 billion API calls in 2025 and reached 60 million consumer devices.

The company argues that integrating its AI and payments platform into Commerce.com’s merchant base would accelerate monetization and create a combined business, generating more than $700 million in revenue.

Commerce.com rejected that premise, saying its own transformation is underway, including improved operating efficiency, margin expansion, and increased investment in AI-enabled commerce capabilities.

The standoff highlights growing competition and consolidation pressure in ecommerce infrastructure, particularly as vendors race to embed AI deeper into buying, selling, and fulfillment workflows.

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