From the official launch of Salesforce's Agentforce Commerce to acquisitions from HubSpot and Genesys, here are extracts from this week’s most popular news stories.
Salesforce Makes Agentforce Commerce Generally Available Ahead of Peak Season
Salesforce has confirmed the general availability for three core agents: Shopper Agent, Buyer Agent, and Merchant Agent.
In addition, the CRM giant has announced native integration into ChatGPT, with Google Search and the Gemini app integrations set to follow in summer 2026.
For CX leaders, the headline feature is the Shopper Agent.
Salesforce claims that its latest AI chatbot is genuinely transactional and fully delivers on the ‘personal shopper’ premise.
The solution checks live inventory, confirms carrier cutoffs, offers store pickup, and closes the sale within a single conversation. It also carries full context and history into any subsequent service interaction, directly targeting one of the complaint-inducing issue of customers having to repeat themselves.
Nitin Mangtani, EVP & GM of Agentforce Commerce at Salesforce, explained that “referral traffic to brand sites will be hugely influenced by AI platforms – Gemini, ChatGPT, Anthropic – and social apps like Instagram and TikTok.
“But commerce itself will happen predominantly on owned and operated properties: your website, your app, your messaging channels, your stores. The brands that win will have their Shopper Agent live on their own properties for the 2026 shopping season.”
HubSpot Acquires Warmly to Fix CRM’s Biggest Blind Spot
HubSpot has made the decision to acquire Warmly, strengthening its AI-powered sales platform.
By helping sales teams enable automation to engage buyers and complete routine tasks, the acquisition advances HubSpot’s strategy of embedding AI directly into its CRM and expanding its intelligent sales capabilities.
Angela DeFranco, GM, VP of Product at HubSpot, explained how this acquisition aligned with its strategy to deliver greater value to customers.
“The gap between building demand and winning deals is one of the hardest problems in GTM, and Warmly has cracked it in a way that directly benefits HubSpot customers. We’re excited to welcome the team to HubSpot.”
With the role of CRM changing, businesses are now expecting these systems to proactively identify opportunities and automate repetitive work.
As pressure builds on sales teams to engage more prospects without adding headcount but not including new capabilities, CRM systems risk becoming passive databases instead of intelligent platforms that drive revenue (Read more...).
Genesys Acquires Pinkfish to Close the Contact Center Automation Gap
Genesys has acquired Pinkfish, an agentic orchestration workflow company, in a move designed to close the gap between AI-driven customer conversations and real-world enterprise action.
