Google has launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open-source framework that allows AI agents to manage the entire shopping process, developed in collaboration with major retailers like Shopify, Walmart, Target, and Etsy. UCP creates a shared infrastructure for AI systems, enabling them to handle product discovery, payment, and post-purchase support across different platforms and agents.
Google is also introducing built-in checkout in AI Mode for Search and the Gemini app, allowing users to complete purchases during the conversation via Google Pay. The new Business Agent places branded assistants directly in search, with capabilities for personalizing interactions, offering promotions, and accessing customer data.
At launch, UCP was supported by more than 20 companies, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Macy’s, Best Buy, and American Express. This standard enables interoperability among AI commerce protocols, and optimizing brands for agent-driven shopping could become as important as websites were in the early stages of e-commerce.
In Brief: Tech World Highlights
- OpenAI researcher Jerry Tworek revealed he is leaving the company after seven years, during which he contributed to early programming systems and led the AI reasoning team.
- Boris Cherny, creator of the Claude Code tool, published a guide on how he uses this agent-based coding tool, including running up to 15 parallel sessions simultaneously.
- OpenAI Chief Product Officer Fidji Simo outlined the 2026 product roadmap in a new blog, aiming to transform ChatGPT into a proactive “personal super-assistant.”
- Abu Dhabi’s TII released Falcon H1R 7B, a small hybrid reasoning model that outperforms competitors up to seven times its size in math and programming, with double the inference speed.
- Microsoft rebranded its Office 365 productivity suite as the “Microsoft 365 Copilot app,” using the same name as its AI assistant.
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- LTX-2: Open-source foundational video model from Lightricks.
