AI is back in the spotlight this week as top companies announced they are leveling up their solutions to better integrate AI into their workflows and improve e-commerce capabilities. SAP announced its “Autonomous Enterprise” solution, designed to enable humans and AI to work together seamlessly, on the sidelines of Sapphire enterprise technology events in Orlando and Madrid.
Alibaba.com also announced a new edition of its “CoCreate Pitch” competition. The company is investing significant funds to encourage small businesses and students to use its Accio Work platform. And finally, Swap announced the launch of its first agency storefront.
Pay attention to the prize
Alibaba.com is expanding its global trade ambitions with the launch of a revamped CoCreate Pitch competition. The competition currently focuses on AI-powered product innovation and offers more than $1 million in prizes.
The company said the initiative will introduce regional finals in Los Angeles and London, as well as a new Asia-Pacific round, where founders, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and students will be invited to build their businesses using Accio Work, the company’s autonomous enterprise AI agent.
Alibaba.com said global commerce is shifting from traditional B2B transactions to so-called A2A (agency-to-agency) transactions, where AI systems manage procurement, logistics and operational complexity. This is where Accio Work can play an important role. The platform is positioned as a driver of this change, enabling entrepreneurs to launch and scale their companies with minimal technological barriers.
Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com, said this is the moment when execution becomes automated and the human perspective becomes a key differentiator.
This year’s competition features three tracks: small businesses, early-stage founders, and students. All participants will use Accio Work’s new CoCreate Pitch Agent to refine their ideas into more structured proposals. Submitted works will be judged on innovation, feasibility, market potential, and effective use of AI tools.
The Los Angeles and London finals will each feature 20 teams competing live. First, second, and third place winners will receive $200,000, $100,000, and $50,000, respectively, and all other finalists will receive $10,000. Prize details for the Asia-Pacific round will be announced at a later date.
SAP launches new software to help enterprises create and run AI agents
Software company SAP announced Autonomous Enterprise on Tuesday. It’s a software that acts like a one-stop shop for enhancing business workflows, from procurement and finance to customer service, all through AI.
SAP said in a statement that Enterprise has an integrated platform for building and managing AI agents and an autonomous suite to perform core business operations.
“By integrating SAP Business AI Platform and SAP Autonomous Suite, we can anchor AI agents in business processes, data, and governance to deliver accurate, compliant, and secure results, enabling new revenue streams and meaningful cost savings,” said Christian Klein, CEO of SAP SE.
At the heart of SAP Business AI Platform is the SAP Knowledge Graph solution. This gives the AI agent a structured map of business entities, processes, and relationships across the customer’s SAP landscape. This includes Joules Studio, which brands can use to develop their own AI agents.
SAP Autonomous Suite, on the other hand, enables SAP’s existing business applications with AI agents that can run processes from start to finish. Deploy over 50 domain-specific Joule Assistants across finance, supply chain, procurement, human capital management, and customer experience.
According to SAP, these assistants automate end-to-end processes by coordinating a subset of more than 200 specialized agents to perform precise tasks. For example, the new Autonomous Close Assistant can shorten the financial close process from weeks to days by automating journal entries, reconciliations, and error resolution throughout the process.
SAP also launched Industry AI, expanding its deep industry portfolio through seven autonomous solutions that enable industry processes from start to finish and incorporate sector-specific process logic, data models, and regulatory requirements.
To accelerate adoption, the company launched a €100 million fund for SAP partners to help customers deploy SAP-built AI assistants and agents. This fund is also available to partners using Joule Studio to extend or build new partner agents on the new SAP Business AI platform.
AI-powered shopping experience
Swap has officially launched the industry’s first agent storefront, introducing a dedicated AI-powered sales channel designed to operate independently of a brand’s primary website. The company said the new platform aims to transform digital shopping by guiding consumers through an interactive journey that includes product discovery, virtual try-on, and a seamless checkout process.
By hosting the experience in a separate .ai destination, Swap enables merchants to provide a guided conversation environment and has already demonstrated conversion rates twice that of traditional e-commerce benchmarks.
This announcement comes at a time when consumer expectations are welcoming the interactive capabilities of large-scale language models (LLMs). Swap co-founder and CEO Sam Atkinson said that while many AI tools prioritize keeping users within their own ecosystem, Swap Storefront is built to ensure brands maintain full ownership of their customer relationships and data. This merchant-first approach allows companies to train AI agents based on specific product lines, ensuring a brand’s unique voice and aesthetic remains at the heart of the shopping experience.
Several well-known global brands, such as Simkhai, Retrofête and Odd Muse, have already integrated this technology into their digital strategies. The founders praised the tool’s ability to extend personalized services, such as digital styling conversations, without diluting the brand identity. For example, Aimee Smale, founder of Odd Muse, lends her voice to the brand’s AI agent to ensure a consistent customer experience.
Beyond the front-end interface, the technology also integrates directly with your existing commerce stack to manage everything from payment processing to logistics to order management. In addition to doubling conversion rates, early data shows that brands using storefronts see customers spend three times as much time on the site and see a 20% decrease in revenue.
Swap said it positions agent commerce as the next essential evolution for modern retail by streamlining the path to purchase within a single flow.
