Trustpilot is actively pursuing strategic partnerships with major eCommerce companies, driven by the increasing traction of AI-driven shopping. Trustpilot chief executive Adrian Blair highlighted in an interview with Bloomberg News that AI agents, acting on behalf of consumers, necessitate extensive information about businesses they interact with. He emphasized that the most effective AI systems will leverage datasets similar to those held by Trustpilot, asserting the company's goal to collaborate with leading eCommerce sites to maximize the utilization of its data.

The company projects its operating margin to reach 30% by 2030, a significant improvement partly attributed to the growing use of its content by Large Language Models (LLMs). This trend is already reflected in traffic patterns, with click-throughs from AI-based search surging by an impressive 1,490% over the past year. This growth is significantly bolstered by Google's decision to make AI search a default feature. Data from Promptwatch further indicates Trustpilot's prominence, ranking it as the fifth most cited domain globally in ChatGPT in January. Blair noted that LLMs have established a new channel for presenting Trustpilot content, leading to increased exposure and referral traffic from LLM-based algorithms.

The broader e-commerce landscape is also adapting to this AI shift. In February 2026, Amazon and OpenAI announced a collaboration to deploy generative AI systems on AWS, utilizing customized models for Amazon's consumer-facing applications, covering both infrastructure provision and model development. Similarly, Walmart's partnership with Google enables users to make purchases directly within the Gemini chatbot. Google has extended these types of arrangements to other retailers, including Shopify. Shopify's Universal Commerce Protocol is designed to allow AI agents to access product data and facilitate transactions directly to checkout, ensuring buyers remain within the AI platform, such as Gemini, instead of navigating to the retailer's website. Microsoft's Copilot Checkout collaboration with PayPal follows a similar model. Shopify has also formed partnerships with companies like Microsoft, enabling merchants to sell through chatbot interfaces and recently introduced product updates describing “agentic storefronts” where transactions are completed within AI interactions.

For marketing professionals, this paradigm shift presents a balance between the loss of valuable first-party data when shoppers purchase through third-party AI proxies and the potential increase in income from trade facilitated by these AI platforms. Amazon, for instance, is currently challenging unauthorized third-party AI agents accessing its platform while simultaneously developing its own assistant to maintain control over user data and advertising revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Despite the evolving role of AI in purchasing, Trustpilot’s Adrian Blair maintained that user-generated reviews retain their inherent value. He argued that consumers will continue to “have experiences” with businesses, affirming Trustpilot’s dataset of reviews as a long-term asset with increasing relevance. The company's shares experienced a decline last month amidst a broader downturn in software stocks, triggered by media speculation about the demise of SaaS platforms following claims by Anthropic. A PYMNTS Intelligence report, “How AI Becomes the Place Consumers Start Everything,” further underscores this trend, describing consumers initiating their product research and shopping journeys on AI platforms, iteratively refining their prompts rather than relying on traditional sequential searches.