The Information's TITV Why Stripe Might Acquire PayPal, Agentic Shopping Course Change, ChatGPT’s Audio Language Barrier
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Feb 25, 2026 
Sheel Mohnot, fintech investor weighing who might buy PayPal and why. Ann Gehan, e-commerce reporter tracking the move from agentic shopping to in-chat checkout buttons. Stephanie Palazzolo, AI audio reporter on language gaps and OpenAI’s push into India. Nick Baird, Koa co-founder building ad infrastructure to help AI apps monetize and cover inference costs. They discuss potential acquirers, commerce UX shifts, multilingual audio hurdles, and AI ad economics.
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Agentic Commerce Shifted To In‑Chat Checkout Buttons
- Agentic commerce vision (AI agents browsing sites like humans) has cooled; companies are embedding checkout buttons and commerce flows directly into chat interfaces instead.
- Ann Gehan reports OpenAI, Google, Perplexity and others favor in-chat checkouts because the web is optimized for humans, not automated agents.
Why Agentic Shopping Struggles On Real Websites
- The technical and UX barriers on merchant sites (pop-ups, bot protection, anti-fraud) make true agentic browsing brittle.
- Gehan explains these human-first web patterns force AI products to prefer embedded checkouts and partnerships instead of autonomous browsing.
Talent Focus Moved Toward Engineering And Partnerships
- AI shopping priorities shifted from agents to engineering and partnerships; companies now hire engineers and commercial partners to build protocols and merchant integrations.
- Gehan highlights Vanessa Lee at Shopify and Asad Awan at OpenAI as key hires steering integrations and ad commerce linkages.