Agentic AI—systems that can autonomously search, decide, and transact on behalf of users—could fundamentally reshape Southeast Asia’s e-commerce model. By shifting power from marketplaces to AI-driven intermediaries, the technology threatens to upend discovery, pricing, and brand relationships across the region.
From Marketplaces to Machines Acting for Consumers
For more than a decade, Southeast Asia’s e-commerce boom has been defined by scale: massive marketplaces, subsidised logistics, and aggressive customer acquisition. Platforms optimised for human browsing—search bars, filters, flash sales—became the dominant interface between consumers and merchants.
Agentic AI challenges that assumption. Instead of users scrolling endlessly through listings, autonomous agents can interpret intent, compare options across platforms, negotiate price or delivery terms, and complete purchases with minimal human input. As Tech in Asia notes, this shift has the potential to move commerce away from app-centric experiences toward AI-mediated decision-making, where the agent—not the marketplace—controls the flow of demand.
Why Southeast Asia E-Commerce Is Especially Exposed
Southeast Asia’s e-commerce ecosystem is unusually sensitive to this transition. The region is mobile-first, highly price-sensitive, and fragmented across languages, currencies, and logistics networks. These complexities are precisely where agentic AI performs best: absorbing messy data, arbitraging across options, and optimising outcomes at scale.
Dominant platforms such as Shopee, Lazada, and Tokopedia have built businesses around controlling discovery and traffic. Agentic AI threatens to bypass those layers entirely, turning marketplaces into back-end fulfillment and inventory providers rather than front-end destinations.
If consumers delegate purchasing decisions to AI agents, brand loyalty could weaken, impulse-driven discovery could decline, and advertising economics could shift dramatically.
A Direct Hit to the E-Commerce Marketplace Monetisation Model
Most SEA marketplaces monetise through a mix of seller fees, advertising, and preferential placement. Agentic AI disrupts all three.
Autonomous shopping agents do not “see” sponsored listings the way humans do. They optimise for constraints—price ceilings, delivery times, brand preferences, sustainability criteria—based on user instructions. That means paid visibility becomes less effective unless platforms find ways to influence the agent itself.
This raises uncomfortable questions:
Who does the agent trust?
Who pays for priority access?
And who governs conflicts of interest?
If AI agents become the primary interface, marketplaces risk losing their most valuable asset: control over consumer attention.
Logistics and Cross-Border Complexity Become AI Advantages
On the flip side, Southeast Asia’s operational complexity could accelerate agent adoption. Cross-border E-Commerce, fragmented last-mile delivery, and inconsistent return policies create friction for consumers. Agentic AI can abstract that complexity away, automatically choosing the best seller-country-logistics combination for each transaction.
For regional sellers, this could be a double-edged sword. While AI agents may unlock demand across borders more efficiently, they also intensify competition by making substitution easier. Sellers may need to optimise for machine-readable attributes—reliability, fulfillment speed, compliance—rather than brand storytelling.
Platforms Are Not Standing Still
Major players are unlikely to watch passively. Some are already experimenting with conversational commerce, recommendation engines, and internal AI assistants. The strategic question is whether platforms can own the agent or whether agents will emerge as independent layers sitting above them.
Big Tech companies with strong AI capabilities, such as Google and Microsoft, could play an outsized role if their assistants evolve into trusted shopping proxies. That would shift leverage away from regional marketplaces toward global AI platforms—an uncomfortable prospect for SEA incumbents.
Regulatory and Trust Frictions Loom Large
Trust is not trivial in Southeast Asia, where scams, counterfeit goods, and data misuse remain persistent concerns. Delegating purchasing authority to an AI agent introduces new risks: erroneous purchases, manipulation, or opaque decision-making.
Regulators may also step in, particularly if agents are seen to distort competition or exploit consumer data. Questions around liability—who is responsible if an AI agent makes a harmful or fraudulent purchase—remain unresolved.
These uncertainties could slow adoption in the short term, but they are unlikely to stop the trajectory altogether.
What Changes for Brands and Sellers
For brands, agentic AI could compress differentiation. Instead of competing for human attention, brands may need to compete for algorithmic preference—optimising metadata, reliability signals, and post-purchase outcomes that agents learn from.
This could favour larger, more operationally mature sellers at the expense of long-tail merchants who rely on visual merchandising and storytelling. At the same time, niche brands that align closely with specific consumer values could benefit if agents are trained on those preferences.
A Structural Shift, Not a Feature Update
The key insight from Tech in Asia’s analysis is that agentic AI is not just another e-commerce feature. It represents a structural shift in who controls commerce. If agents become the primary decision-makers, marketplaces must rethink their role, revenue models, and defensibility.
For Southeast Asia—where e-commerce is still evolving and profitability remains fragile—the disruption could be sharper and faster than in more mature markets.
The question is no longer whether agentic AI will influence e-commerce in the region. It is whether SEA’s platforms can adapt quickly enough to remain relevant when consumers stop shopping—and start delegating.
