This week, AI once again stole the spotlight as top companies said they are leveling up their solutions to better integrate AI into workflows and to improve e-commerce capabilities. Timed with its Sapphire enterprise technology events in Orlando and Madrid, SAP unveiled its “Autonomous Enterprise” solution, which is designed so humans and AI can work together seamlessly.
Alibaba.com also announced a new edition to its “CoCreate Pitch” competition. The company is putting big money on the table to encourage small businesses and students to use its Accio Work platform. And lastly, Swap said it was launching first agentic storefront.
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Eye on the Prize
Alibaba.com is expanding its ambitions in global trade with the launch of a revamped CoCreate Pitch competition, which is now centered on AI‑powered product innovation and offering more than $1 million in prizes.
The company said the initiative introduces regional finals in Los Angeles and London as well as a new Asia‑Pacific round, inviting founders, small- to mid-size enterprises (SMEs), and students to build businesses using Accio Work, the company’s autonomous enterprise AI agent.
Alibaba.com said global commerce is shifting from traditional B2B transactions to what it calls A2A (agent‑to‑agent) trade, where AI systems manage sourcing, logistics and operational complexity. And this is where Accio Work can play a key role. The platform is positioned as the engine of this shift, enabling entrepreneurs to launch and scale companies with minimal technical barriers.
Alibaba.com president Kuo Zhang described the moment as one where execution becomes automated and human perspective becomes the key differentiator.
This year’s competition features three tracks for SMEs, early‑stage founders, and students. All participants will use Accio Work’s new “CoCreate Pitch Agent” to refine ideas into more structured proposals. Submissions will be judged on innovation, feasibility, market potential and effective use of AI tools.
Finals in Los Angeles and London will each showcase 20 teams competing live. First‑, second- and third‑place winners will receive $200,000, $100,000, and $50,000, respectively, while all other finalists will earn $10,000. Prize details for the Asia‑Pacific round will be announced later.
SAP Launches New Software to Help Businesses Create and Run AI Agents
Software firm SAP introduced the Autonomous Enterprise on Tuesday, a software that acts like a one-stop shop for enhancing business workflows from procurement and finance to customer service—all done through AI.
The Enterprise has a unified platform for building and governing AI agents, as well as an autonomous suite that would execute core business operations, SAP said in a statement.
“By uniting SAP Business AI Platform with SAP Autonomous Suite, we anchor AI agents in the business processes, data and governance so they can deliver accurate, compliant and secure outcomes, unlocking new sources of revenue and meaningful cost savings,” said Christian Klein, CEO of SAP SE.
At the heart of the SAP Business AI Platform is the SAP Knowledge Graph solution, which gives AI agents a structured map of business entities, processes and relationships across a customer’s SAP landscape. It includes the Joules Studio, which brands can use to develop their own AI agents.
The SAP Autonomous Suite, on the other hand, enables SAP’s existing business applications, with AI agents capable of running processes from start to finish. It will deploy more than 50 domain-specific Joule Assistants across finance, supply chain, procurement, human capital management and customer experience.
These assistants will automate end-to-end processes by orchestrating a subset of over 200 specialized agents to execute precise tasks, SAP said. For example, the new Autonomous Close Assistant can compress the financial close process from weeks to days by automating journal entries, reconciliation and error resolution across the entire process.
SAP also launched Industry AI, expanding its deep industry portfolio through seven autonomous solutions that will enable start-to-finish industry processes and embed sector-specific process logic, data models and regulatory requirements.
To incentivize adoption, the company has launched a 100 million Euro fund for SAP partners to help customers deploy SAP-built AI assistants and agents. The fund is also available to partners that extend or build new partner agents on the new SAP Business AI Platform using Joule Studio.
AI-powered Shopping Experiences
Swap has officially launched the industry’s first agentic 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 change digital shopping by guiding consumers through an interactive journey that includes product discovery, virtual try-ons and a seamless checkout process.
By hosting the experience on a separate “.ai” destination, Swap allows merchants to provide a guided, conversational environment that has already demonstrated conversion rates twice as high as traditional e-commerce benchmarks.
The launch comes at a time when consumer expectations are welcoming the interactive capabilities of large language models (LLMs). Swap co-founder and CEO Sam Atkinson said while many AI tools prioritize keeping users within their own ecosystems, Swap Storefront is built to ensure brands maintain total ownership of their customer relationships and data. This merchant-first approach allows businesses to train AI agents on their specific product lines, ensuring the brand’s unique voice and aesthetic remain central to the shopping experience.
Several high-profile global brands, including Simkhai, Retrofête and Odd Muse, have already integrated the technology into their digital strategies. Founders have praised the tool for its ability to scale personalized service, such as digital styling conversations, without diluting the brand identity. For instance, Odd Muse founder Aimee Smale has even lent her own voice to her brand’s AI agent to ensure a consistent customer experience.
Beyond the front-end interface, the technology also integrates directly with existing commerce stacks, managing everything from payment processing to logistics and order management. In addition to doubling conversion rates, early data shows that brands using the storefront are seeing customers spend three times longer on their sites and are experiencing a 20 percent reduction in returns.
By streamlining the path to purchase within a single flow, Swap said it is positioning agentic commerce as the next essential evolution for modern retail.
