The Brief: Grocery AI at Kroger, Alexa Custom Merch, Ulta AI Results, Mastercard Agent Pay

Jun 10

In today's brief: Agentic commerce kept making moves this week. A grocery AI platform went live with two major chains, Amazon's shopping agent learned a new trick, Ulta Beauty showed what early AI results actually look like, and Mastercard's CEO asked the consumer protection question everyone else is avoiding.

Today's stories:

1. Cooklist brings its AI shopping assistant to Kroger and Wegmans

2. Alexa for Shopping now lets you design custom merch with a text prompt

3. Ulta Beauty's AI assistant is driving real ecommerce growth

4. Mastercard's CEO wants to know what happens when the AI agent gets it wrong

Grocery AI Just Got a Lot More Mainstream

Cooklist launched its AI Shopping Assistant with Kroger and Wegmans, putting agentic grocery shopping in front of 10 million digital shoppers across more than 700 stores. The platform takes natural language requests, checks live inventory, and builds personalized product bundles based on a shopper's purchase history, budget, dietary preferences, and nutritional goals. It can also import recipes from social media videos or blog posts and turn them into checkout-ready carts.

Cooklist plans to roll out to 10 more grocery banners and another 7 million shoppers in the coming weeks. When a shopper can describe what they want for dinner and get a cart built from actual in-stock items at their local store, that's agentic commerce doing exactly what it's supposed to do. For more on where this is all heading, I've written about the agentic AI opportunity in retail.

Alexa for Shopping Now Makes You a Merch Designer (Whether You Asked or Not)

Amazon added a new feature to Alexa for Shopping this week: type a prompt, get a custom design for a T-shirt, sweatshirt, or water bottle. Amazon then prints and ships it through Merch on Demand with Prime-eligible delivery, and designing is free — you only pay when you actually order something.

Alexa for Shopping launched in mid-May as a combined version of Rufus and Alexa+, Amazon's generative AI-upgraded voice assistant. Amazon demoed the feature with a sample prompt of "make a design of a golden retriever as a 90s corporate lawyer at a disco," which sounds about right for an AI-generated T-shirt. The feature is live for all U.S. customers, with more customizable product types on the way.

Hey Printful, you feeling good right about now? Asking for a friend.

Ulta's AI Assistant Is Not Just a Press Release Anymore

Ulta Beauty's Q1 results are the kind of numbers that make other retailers pay attention. Ecommerce comparable sales grew in the mid-teens while physical store comps came in at low single digits, and total net sales hit $3.16 billion, up 11.1% year over year. A big part of that digital lift is Ulta AI, an AI shopping assistant launched in April and built on Google's Gemini Enterprise.

Ulta also integrated with Google's AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app, letting shoppers search, compare, and buy directly through Google's conversational interfaces. Add in an Uber Eats partnership for same-day delivery across 1,500-plus stores, Klarna's buy now, pay later option, and a TikTok Shop livestream that pulled more than 5 million impressions, and this is a company running a real omnichannel playbook. Full-year guidance calls for 6% to 7% net sales growth.

Looking for which retailers have upcoming earnings reports? Check out my Interactive Retail Earnings Calendar

Mastercard's CEO Is Asking the Questions Nobody Else Is

Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach went on record this week with some pointed concerns about agentic commerce: What happens when an AI agent buys the wrong thing? Is the agent actually who it claims to be? Will it follow spending instructions? Those aren't hypothetical anymore. Robinhood launched an agentic credit card feature in May letting customers connect third-party AI agents to their accounts with preset spending caps, and Stripe expanded its Shared Payment Tokens to let AI agents initiate transactions using tokenized credentials from both Mastercard and Visa.

Mastercard's answer is Agent Pay, a framework that uses tokenization to replace card numbers with secure digital credentials and includes a "Know Your Agent" verification process so banks can approve or block individual AI agents. Accenture found 78% of financial institutions expect AI agent-related fraud to rise significantly, and the Consumer Bankers Association called agentic payment tools a potential massive disruptor of the existing consumer payments landscape. The infrastructure is moving fast. The guardrails are moving a little less fast. I've written more on where this is heading in my piece on the future of agentic AI in retail.

That's it for today.

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FAQs

What is Cooklist and how does it work with Kroger?

Cooklist is a grocery AI platform that uses natural language to check inventory and build personalized shopping carts. It launched with Kroger and Wegmans in June 2026, reaching 10 million digital shoppers across more than 700 stores.

Is Ulta Beauty using AI for ecommerce?

Yes. Ulta launched its Ulta AI shopping assistant in April 2026, built on Google's Gemini Enterprise. The company posted mid-teen ecommerce comparable sales growth in Q1 and credits ongoing digital investments, including AI, as a key driver.

What is Mastercard Agent Pay?

Agent Pay is Mastercard's agentic commerce security framework that uses tokenization to secure AI-initiated transactions and includes a "Know Your Agent" verification process so banks can approve or block individual AI agents.

Can AI agents make purchases on your behalf?

Yes. Robinhood launched an agentic credit card feature in May 2026, and Stripe supports AI-initiated transactions through tokenized credentials. Both Mastercard and Visa are building infrastructure to support AI-agent purchasing with consumer protection guardrails.

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Greg Zakowicz