Salesforce is investing in Callimacus, the artificial intelligence-powered platform developed by luxury retailer Brunello Cucinelli’s Solomei AI team, betting that AI-generated shopping experiences could reshape how brands engage online shoppers.

Callimacus was designed to ditch traditional website navigation in favor of AI-generated experiences composed in real time for each visitor. Now, Salesforce will support its deployment for new clients in Europe and North America.

78 of the Top 2000 online retailers in North America use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2025, those 78 online retailers combined for more than $192.60 billion in web sales. The Top 2000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database ranking North America’s largest online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales.

Why Salesforce is backing Brunello Cucinelli’s Callimacus platform

Francesco Bottigliero, CEO of Callimacus and chief of humanistic technology at the holding company Foro delle Arti and Brunello Cucinelli, praised Salesforce as the right partner at the right time.

“We found Callimacus especially strong from an industrial and commercial standpoint — a platform available on the market for any kind of integration,” Bottigliero said. “It’s a small, young, talented team, but we also needed someone besides us who could guide us through the development of this project.”

Salesforce likewise expressed enthusiasm for the partnership.

“Brunello has always believed that technology should elevate humanity, and that conviction is at the heart of Callimacus,” said Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce. “The team has developed an innovative platform that reimagines AI-powered experiences,  bringing together conversational AI, enterprise context, and real-time personalization to create entirely new ways for businesses to engage with their customers.”

Benioff, who often champions Salesforce’s own AI efforts, spoke highly of what Solomei’s team had already accomplished.

“We’re proud to partner with Brunello and the Solomei AI team as they pioneer a new generation of AI-powered experiences,” he stated.

Cucinelli’s Callimacus debut

The Callimacus technology got its first real-world test in January. At the time, Brunello Cucinelli launched BrunelloCucinelli.AI, which the company called a “pageless” storefront built on the platform. Salesforce said the new investment would help Callimacus. That could mean growing its engineering and AI research teams, speeding up product development. Moreover, it could position the product to scale commercial operations across Europe and North America.

Interest from other verticals has been strong since Callimacus launched, according to Brunello Cucinelli.

“More than 40 inbound inquiries have come in from other industries — not fashion, not luxury, but consumer goods companies too,” Bottigliero said.

He added that the stronger the brand itself, the more of a story it has to tell, and the more it wants to personalize the experience to create a personalized, richly crafted experience.

“That’s where there’s the biggest advantage in adopting Callimacus: when the brand identity is strong and the experience itself needs to be crafted, not just [a generic storefront],” Bottigliero assessed.

Online retailer challenges in the luxury space

Maisa Benatti is the CEO of AIUTA, a fashion-tech company that builds AI-powered visual infrastructure for retailers. She has been working in the AI agentic fashion space for almost a decade. Benatti said most ecommerce experiences are still fundamentally designed around the limitations of the web from 20 years ago: static pages, fixed content and a one-size-fits-all customer journey.

“I think agentic, ‘pageless’ commerce is the natural evolution of online shopping,” she stated. “Instead of customers navigating websites, AI will increasingly assemble experiences in real time around their intent, context and preferences.”

Benatti added that she believes when navigation becomes conversational, merchandising becomes more dynamic. That can be characterized by tailored content generated for personalization, rather than being pre-produced.

Benatti refers to this broader shift as “liquid content.”

“Rather than creating a fixed set of product images, videos or editorial campaigns, retailers will have a flexible layer of visual assets that can be recomposed instantly for each shopper,” Benatti explained.

She noted that a customer will not simply see the campaign as it was shot. Instead, she thinks they will see themselves in it.

“They can swap garments with pieces from their own wardrobe, change models, styling, backgrounds, body types, or climates, all while preserving the brand’s creative direction,” she said. “The content becomes adaptive rather than static.”

Benatti anticipated that what is starting with luxury brands will eventually expand. Along the way, other, non-luxury merchants and brands could stand to benefit as well.

“Once retailers realize that adaptive content improves conversion, increases confidence and reduces production costs, I expect it to become part of the standard commerce stack rather than a novelty,” Benatti said.

Agentic AI’s future for retail and luxury brands

Following Brunello Cucinelli’s AI launch, Bottigliero said customer time spent on Brunello Cucinelli’s website has doubled. In turn, he said, the development led to more conversions.

Still, Benatti shared the road to agentic AI isn’t without pitfalls.

“There are important challenges,” she stated. “Brand control becomes even more critical when content is generated dynamically — brands need guardrails that ensure every generated experience still reflects their identity.”

In addition, she mentioned that analytics also need to evolve from just measuring page performance. Ultimately, she believes they need to account for which AI-generated experiences actually influence customer behavior.

“SEO [search engine optimization] will undoubtedly change as traditional page structures become less central, but I see search itself becoming increasingly AI-driven, making structured product data and content quality more important than static landing pages,” Benatti noted.

She said she doesn’t necessarily think the future of online shopping is pageless.

“The bigger shift is from pre-created experiences to generated experiences,” she said. “Retailers won’t compete on who has the most content — they’ll compete on who can generate the most relevant experience for every individual customer, in real time.”

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