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.
The acquisition brings Pinkfish’s MCP-based tool integration and workflow automation capabilities into Genesys Cloud AI.
At the time of writing, financial terms have not been disclosed.
For contact center operators, Genesys’ play appears to be that, rather than AI that listens and routes, the company is building toward AI that actually does.
With Pinkfish’s ecosystem of more than 500 integrations and 25,000 MCP tools spanning CRM, ERP, IT, HR, order management, and billing systems, the Genesys Cloud Agentic Virtual Agent is set to handle complex customer requests from start to finish, without handing off to a human agent.
Glenn Nethercutt, EVP and CTO of Genesys, explained that “agentic AI is moving customer experience from assisted engagement to governed execution.
“With Pinkfish, we’re advancing agentic orchestration by connecting customer intent to enterprise data, business workflows, and governed actions through Genesys Cloud AI, so organizations can resolve more complex customer needs with greater autonomy, control, and speed.”
Microsoft Brings Safety to AI-Driven Commerce with New MCP Server
Microsoft has introduced a managed MCP server in Dynamics 365 Commerce to ensure AI agents interact securely with retail systems.
Without a secure layer between AI agents and retail systems, AI can become a significant operational and security risk and organizations lose more control over its actions.
CX leaders must therefore ensure that their AI agents are able to complex customer-facing tasks whilst maintaining the basic governance and security required for reliable experiences.
Gaining an early preview of the MCP server, Shaun Morley, Group Retail and Omnichannel Systems Manager at Michael Hill, highlighted that retailers can accelerate AI adoption by building on their existing commerce infrastructure.
“Our early experience with testing Dynamics 365 Commerce MCP server has been promising,” he noted.
“Having access to this type of tooling creates a practical way to introduce AI-driven innovation at the pace retail demands, simply by layering intelligence over existing commerce platforms.”
