WEF: Agent-Driven Commerce Already Hit $22B

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The Latest Agentic Development

World Economic Forum: "Know Your Agent" (KYA) Framework Critical as Agentic Commerce Scales to $50B by 2030

The World Economic Forum published urgent guidance on trust infrastructure for agentic commerce, proposing a "Know Your Agent" (KYA) framework analogous to Know Your Customer (KYC) in finance. With AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites up 805% YoY by Black Friday 2025 and agentic agents already driving $22B in global online sales, the WEF warns that without identity verification and accountability protocols for agents, fraud at scale becomes inevitable. The framework calls for governments, standards bodies, and organizations to establish interoperable agent authentication before malicious actors exploit gaps.

Strategic implication: Identity and accountability infrastructure is becoming a governance prerequisite, not a future nice-to-have. First-mover institutions (banks, fintechs, cloud providers) that implement KYA now gain competitive advantage and regulatory credibility.

Torq Raises $140M Series D at $1.2B Valuation: AI Agents Deployed at Fortune 500 Scale

Torq, the agentic AI security operations pioneer, closed a $140 million Series D (led by strategic investors in the AI security space) to expand its AI SOC platform. Torq's AI agents now handle millions of security tasks autonomously at firms like Marriott, PepsiCo, Siemens, Uber, and Virgin Atlantic achieving 90% alert investigation time reduction and enabling security teams to manage 100X more alerts without increasing headcount. The funding accelerates Torq's shift from legacy SOAR/SIEM tools toward full agentic autonomous security operations.

Strategic implication: Security operations are now the first horizontal use case seeing production-scale multi-agent deployment. Torq's $1.2B valuation signals investor confidence that agentic AI, when deployed correctly for clear outcomes (threat triage, alert fatigue elimination), delivers immediate ROI.

Microsoft Launches Copilot Checkout: AI Assistant-to-Payment in Seconds

Microsoft rolled out Copilot Checkout, enabling shoppers to discover, compare, and complete purchases entirely within Copilot's conversational interface-no redirects to retailer websites. Launched in the U.S. with payment partners PayPal, Stripe, and Shopify (Shopify merchants auto-enrolled), initial retail partners include Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Ashley Furniture, and Etsy sellers. Microsoft's data shows Copilot shopping interactions drive 53% more purchases within 30 minutes and are 194% more likely to convert when shopping intent is present.

Strategic implication: Microsoft is collapsing the gap between discovery, recommendation, and checkout to own the end-to-end transaction layer. All Shopify merchants are opted-in by default, giving Microsoft immediate scale without retailer friction.

GitLab ships Duo Agent Platform (GA) for “agentic” DevSecOps

GitLab pushed its Duo Agent Platform to general availability, positioning agents as orchestration across the entire software lifecycle (not just code completion). Notable monetization signal: it’s introducing GitLab Credits (usage-based) with monthly included credit amounts for Premium/Ultimate users—an early blueprint for how “agent platforms” get packaged and priced.

World Economic Forum rolls out EVA, an Agentforce-powered “proactive concierge” for Davos

Salesforce announced the WEF launched “EVA,” an agentic assistant built on Agentforce 360 to support 3,000+ leaders at Davos (Jan 19–23, 2026). Strategic implication: this is a real-world, high-stakes deployment framing agents as action/priority systems operating over a large institutional knowledge base—not a demo chatbot.

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