CITIC Securities: Agent Commerce Reshaping Consumer Internet Infrastructure

Introduction: AI Agents Are Rewriting E-Commerce Transaction Logic

While the industry is still debating how large language models can empower traditional e-commerce, a far more profound infrastructure transformation is already quietly underway. CITIC Securities recently released a new research report, clearly identifying 2026 as the critical window for Agent Commerce to transition from proof of concept to protocol-based, standardized, and large-scale deployment. The report emphasizes that Agent Commerce is not a partial functional upgrade to traditional e-commerce, but rather a significant infrastructure overhaul of the consumer internet in the AI era, with the payment clearing layer and foundation model layer offering particularly strong investment certainty.

This assessment has attracted widespread attention across the industry. As AI Agent technology rapidly matures, a new commercial era in which intelligent agents comprehensively take over consumer decision-making and transaction execution is accelerating toward reality.

Core Thesis: From 'People Searching for Products' to 'Demand-Is-Delivery'

The central argument of the CITIC Securities report is that AI Agents are beginning to assume full-chain transaction functions including demand understanding, product screening, price comparison and decision-making, and order placement and payment. This means the traditional e-commerce model of consumers actively searching, browsing, comparing, and ordering — the 'people searching for products' paradigm — is being replaced by an entirely new 'demand-is-delivery' paradigm.

Under the Agent Commerce framework, users need only express a vague consumption need, and the AI Agent can automatically complete the entire closed loop from demand parsing, product matching, and price optimization to final order placement and payment. Consumers no longer need to repeatedly switch between multiple platforms to compare prices, nor do they need to spend significant time sifting through reviews — these tasks will be efficiently handled by AI Agents equipped with deep reasoning capabilities.

The report provides a systematic analysis from an industry chain perspective, dividing the Agent Commerce ecosystem into four core layers with differentiated investment assessments:

• Payment Clearing Layer: Offers strong investment certainty
• Foundation Model Layer: Offers strong investment certainty
• Platform/Entry Layer: Possesses broad development elasticity
• Toolchain Layer: Possesses broad development elasticity

In-Depth Analysis: Why the Payment Clearing Layer and Foundation Model Layer Offer the Strongest Certainty

Payment Clearing Layer: The 'Vascular System' of the Agent Economy

Within the Agent Commerce ecosystem, the payment clearing layer plays an irreplaceable foundational role. When AI Agents execute transactions on behalf of humans, an entirely new set of machine-readable payment protocols and clearing standards is required. Regardless of how upper-layer application forms evolve, every transaction must ultimately complete value transfer through the payment clearing system.

This 'pipeline effect' endows the payment clearing layer with extremely high certainty. Just as Alipay and WeChat Pay became infrastructure in the mobile internet era, the Agent Commerce era likewise requires a new generation of payment infrastructure capable of supporting automated inter-Agent settlement, cross-platform clearing, and smart contract execution. Companies that have already established deep moats in the payments sector stand to benefit first in this wave of transformation.

Foundation Model Layer: The 'Central Brain' of Agent Intelligence

The core capabilities of AI Agents originate from the reasoning, comprehension, and decision-making abilities of underlying large models. Regardless of which vertical scenario an Agent is deployed in, its core capabilities — including product understanding, user intent parsing, and multi-turn dialogue negotiation — are highly dependent on foundation model performance.

CITIC Securities believes that the investment certainty of the foundation model layer stems from its 'essential technology' attribute. As Agent Commerce scales, the volume of foundation model API calls will grow exponentially. Companies that have established leading advantages in model performance, inference efficiency, and cost control will achieve sustained and predictable revenue growth.

Platform/Entry Layer and Toolchain Layer: Greater Elasticity but Fiercer Competition

By comparison, while the platform/entry layer and toolchain layer possess broad development elasticity, the competitive landscape remains unclear. At the platform level, traditional e-commerce giants, search engines, social platforms, and even emerging AI-native applications all have the potential to become primary entry points for Agent Commerce, and who will ultimately prevail remains highly uncertain. The toolchain layer faces a similar situation, with Agent development frameworks, testing tools, monitoring platforms, and other subsegments all flourishing, and market consolidation still requiring time.

Industry Impact: 2026 Will Be a Critical Watershed

CITIC Securities defines 2026 as the critical window for Agent Commerce, a timeline supported by multiple layers of logic.

First, from a technology maturity perspective, the reasoning capabilities and tool-calling abilities of current mainstream large models are rapidly improving and are expected to reach the basic threshold for supporting complex transaction scenarios by 2026. Second, from a standardization perspective, key specifications including inter-Agent communication protocols, identity authentication mechanisms, and transaction security standards are being developed at an accelerated pace, with preliminary consensus expected by 2026. Finally, from a commercial validation perspective, multiple leading companies are already piloting Agent shopping assistants, automated procurement, and other scenarios, and the accumulated experience and data will lay the foundation for large-scale deployment.

Notably, the rise of Agent Commerce will also bring deep restructuring of the commercial ecosystem. When AI Agents become the primary 'consumer decision-makers,' traditional business logic around advertising placement, traffic operations, and brand marketing will all face fundamental changes. Merchants may need to shift from 'attracting human attention' to 'optimizing Agent readability.' SEO may evolve into AEO (Agent Engine Optimization), and the entire digital marketing industry will undergo a paradigm shift.

Outlook: A New Era for the AI Consumer Internet

From a broader perspective, Agent Commerce represents not merely a technological upgrade but a fundamental leap in the consumer internet development paradigm. If the PC internet era achieved 'information digitization' and the mobile internet era achieved 'service digitization,' then the Agent Commerce era will truly achieve 'decision-making intelligence.'

For investors, the CITIC Securities report provides a clear analytical framework: making rational allocations between certainty and elasticity. The payment clearing layer and foundation model layer are suitable as long-term core holdings, while the platform/entry layer and toolchain layer are suitable as elastic positions to capture excess returns as the industry landscape gradually clarifies.

For industry practitioners, the critical 2026 window means that now is the golden time for strategic positioning. Whether traditional e-commerce platforms, payment institutions, or AI technology companies, all need to carefully consider their positioning within the Agent Commerce industry chain and build technological moats and ecosystem advantages as early as possible.

The consumer revolution driven by AI Agents is no longer a question of 'whether it will come,' but 'when it will fully erupt.' And the answer from CITIC Securities is: in 2026, the transformation will officially begin.