In a strategic maneuver designed to capitalize on the upcoming holiday spending surge, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity announced on Wednesday that it will roll out a free “agentic” shopping product for U.S. users next week.
This launch marks a significant escalation in the race to monetize AI search, moving beyond simple information retrieval to direct transaction facilitation. The initiative is anchored by a robust infrastructure partnership with PayPal, which will enable users to purchase items directly from more than 5,000 merchants without ever leaving the Perplexity search engine interface.
The core value proposition of this new offering centers on the concept of “agentic” commerce—a term increasingly used to describe AI that acts on behalf of the user rather than merely advising them. Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer, defined this pivot by noting that while most consumers still desire the autonomy to conduct their own research, they demand a streamlined bridge between discovery and acquisition.
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“The agentic part is the seamless purchase right from the answer,” Shevelenko told CNBC in an interview. “Most people want to still do their own research. They want that streamlined and simplified, and so that’s the part that is agentic in this launch.”
The “agentic” component effectively collapses the traditional sales funnel, allowing for a seamless purchase immediately following the answer to a user’s query. To achieve this, the new free product utilizes memory from a user’s previous searches to better detect shopping intent and deliver highly personalized results, an evolution from the company’s initial “Buy With Pro” offering released for paid subscribers late last year.
A critical operational shift in this launch involves the “Merchant of Record” status, a detail with significant legal and logistical implications. Under the previous “Buy With Pro” model, Perplexity acted as the intermediary that completed purchases. However, under the new framework, the merchants themselves will serve as the merchants of record.
This means the retailers will retain control over the transaction lifecycle, including customer service and returns, while utilizing PayPal’s backend architecture to process the payments. Michelle Gill, who leads PayPal’s agentic strategy, emphasized that this infrastructure includes the company’s buyer protection policies, ensuring that users remain reimbursed if problems arise—a necessary layer of trust as consumers begin transacting on novel AI platforms.
The timing and structure of this rollout place Perplexity in direct confrontation with OpenAI, which is aggressively building its own e-commerce ecosystem. OpenAI announced a similar feature called Instant Checkout in September, allowing ChatGPT users to transact directly with initial partners like Etsy, Shopify, and eventually PayPal.
A key point of divergence in their business models appears to be monetization; while OpenAI has explicitly stated it will take a fee from purchases made through its “Instant Checkout,” Perplexity has declined to share whether it will earn revenue from these transactions. This silence suggests Perplexity may be prioritizing user growth and market share over immediate monetization in the early stages of this “next era of commerce.”
What’s in it for Perplexity?
Some analysts believe that this structural change significantly de-risks Perplexity’s business model by shielding the company from three specific liabilities. First, it mitigates financial and fraud liability. In the previous intermediary model, Perplexity was exposed to chargeback risks if a user utilized a stolen credit card; now, PayPal processes the payment directly between the user and the merchant, removing Perplexity from the flow of funds. Second, it alleviates the burden of sales tax compliance. Because the merchant is now the record holder, they retain the responsibility for calculating, collecting, and remitting sales tax, allowing Perplexity to avoid the complex legal status of a “marketplace facilitator” across thousands of jurisdictions.
Finally, the shift transfers operational and product liability back to the retailer. Perplexity explicitly stated that merchants will handle processes like purchases, customer service, and returns directly.
Furthermore, Gill emphasized that PayPal’s buyer protection policies will apply to these transactions. This ensures that users remain reimbursed if problems arise, but the operational overhead of triaging returns and defective products falls on the retailer and PayPal rather than Perplexity. This pivot transforms Perplexity from a logistics-heavy reseller into a scalable technology platform.