Alphabet executives used the company’s Q4 earnings call to describe a change that could alter how businesses buy and sell online: the rise of AI agents that can discover products, evaluate suppliers and complete purchases without a human navigating a website.

CEO Sundar Pichai said Google has “laid the groundwork for shopping in the AI era” with what he called the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open standard it designed to allow AI systems to complete transactions directly inside Google’s AI experiences, including Search’s AI Mode and the Gemini app.

“I think the launch of the Universal Commerce Protocol … has been super well received,” Pichai told analysts. “Now, we are integrating those experiences into Gemini, AI Mode and so on. So I think this is the year where you will see consumers actually being able to use all of this.”

Although the examples Google cited were consumer-oriented, the mechanics apply closely to B2B commerce, where purchasing is often rules-based, specification-heavy and repetitive — the type of workflow AI agents are being built to handle.

How Google can monetize through AI Mode

Google said AI-driven search sessions are becoming longer, more conversational and increasingly multimodal. Furthermore, users are submitting voice and image queries in addition to text. Pichai said these patterns are “driving greater usage” and creating what he called an “expansionary moment” for Search.

At the same time, Google is testing how commercial activity fits into those AI sessions.

Philip Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, said the company is experimenting with monetization inside AI Mode, including placing ads below AI-generated responses and piloting “direct offers,” where advertisers can present promotions to users who appear ready to buy.

“We have significantly increased our focus on AI Mode and are in the early stages experimenting with AI Mode monetization,” Schindler said. “For example, we announced direct offers in a new Google Ads pilot, which will allow advertisers to show exclusive offers for shoppers who are ready to buy directly in AI Mode.”

Google also said that, “soon,” users will be able to complete purchases directly inside AI Mode and Gemini with select merchants.

For business buyers, the model Google described compresses what is now a multi-step procurement process — research, comparison, quoting and ordering — into a conversational AI workflow.

Google using AI agents for B2B purchasing needs

Once it meets internal policy rules, an AI agent could:

• Interpret a purchasing need.
• Evaluate product specifications.
• Check availability and delivery windows.
• Confirm pricing terms.
• Complete an order.

Pichai said Google spent 2025 “working with the ecosystem to develop the underlying protocol that’s going to be needed for this agentic world.” He suggested 2026 will be the first year these capabilities begin to appear in real buying scenarios.

For distributors, manufacturers and B2B marketplaces, Google’s direction suggests the next competitive advantage is not simply having an ecommerce site, but being machine-readable and transaction-ready for AI systems.

If AI agents are selecting suppliers, sellers with the most complete structured data will be easier for those agents to evaluate and choose. Having the most complete structured data will include:

• Specifications.
• Compatibility details.
• Packaging units.
• Substitutes.
• Pricing tiers.
• Delivery information.

Likewise, dependable APIs for inventory, pricing, terms and order placement become essential. A protocol that companies build for AI-driven transactions requires systems that can respond to machines in real time, not just humans browsing product pages.

Alphabet’s planned infrastructure investments in 2026

Google’s emphasis on “direct offers” also hints that it could eventually present contract pricing, promotions and negotiated B2B terms in formats AI agents can interpret and apply automatically.

Alphabet is supporting the strategy with a significant increase in infrastructure investment. The company said it expects 2026 capital expenditures to total $175 billion to $185 billion, primarily to expand AI compute capacity for its own models and for Google Cloud customers.

Chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said roughly 60% of recent capital spending has gone toward servers and 40% toward data centers and networking equipment. That underscores the scale of the buildout needed to support AI workloads.

Google Cloud is central to the plan. Pichai said nearly 75% of cloud customers are using Google’s vertically integrated AI stack. He added that enterprises are increasingly building AI agents on top of Gemini and Google infrastructure.

For years, B2B digital strategy focused on helping human buyers find products through search engines, distributor portals and procurement catalogs. Google’s latest comments point to a next phase. In it, buyer-side and seller-side AI agents handle much of that work.

“We are excited about a future where as people are going through discovery, searching, finding new things, if they’re interested in acting upon it, all of that is seamless,” Pichai said.

In that future, the buyer may not be a person at all. Instead, it might be an AI system operating under budget, policy and urgency rules. And the sellers best positioned to win may be those whose data, pricing and ordering systems are easiest for that AI to understand and use.

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Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan. Follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and YouTube.