AI Agents Are Coming for Online Shopping: ARK Says $8 Trillion by 2030

ARK Invest projects that artificial intelligence (AI) agents could facilitate $8 trillion in online consumer spending by 2030.

The projection highlights the growing opportunity in AI-driven commerce as major firms compete to build the infrastructure powering autonomous digital transactions.

ARK Sees AI Agents Driving Commerce and Reshaping Online Search

In its latest Big Ideas 2026 report, ARK Invest forecasts that AI agents could account for a growing portion of online transactions. The share could rise from 2% of digital spending in 2025 to nearly 25% by 2030 as consumers increasingly rely on intelligent systems to make purchasing decisions.

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The report also projected strong growth across other AI-driven segments. According to ARK Invest, AI-powered search could grow from 10% of global search traffic in 2025 to 65% by 2030.

“AI-related search advertising increases ~50% at an annual rate. AI ads are likely to take share from traditional search advertising, with monetization likely to follow with a two-year lag,” the report read.

The report further estimated that AI-mediated consumer revenue could surge from around $20 billion today to nearly $900 billion by 2030. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 105%. 

Firms Race to Power Agent Payments

As interest in AI-driven commerce accelerates, companies are increasingly rolling out infrastructure designed to support autonomous digital payments.

On May 7, Amazon Web Services introduced its AgentCore Payments service. The service allows AI agents to instantly access and pay for services such as APIs, web content, MCP servers, and other AI agents.

“There will soon be more AI agents transacting than humans, and they need money that’s built for the internet – programmable, always on, and global. By bringing Coinbase’s stablecoin infrastructure and x402 into AWS AgentCore, we’re giving developers the full stack to build agents that move money at software speed, with the trust and compliance enterprises expect,” Brian Foster, Head of Infrastructure Growth and Strategy, Coinbase said.

Solana Foundation and Google Cloud introduced Pay.sh. It is a marketplace designed to enable AI agents to complete stablecoin payments on the Solana network. Anchorage Digital also launched Agentic Banking.

The developments suggest that crypto-based payment rails and stablecoins could play a major role in powering the next wave of AI-led digital commerce.

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