State Of GenAI – Only 1% – ShopTalk 2025 In Numbers

Surprise: the generative AI future has not yet arrived in business. We analyzed 700 vendors at ShopTalk – the biggest e-commerce conference of the year – in regards to generative AI (GenAI). The results are surprising.

I have a confession to make: I’m from Silicon Valley. I’ve worked in AI for 35 years. My life revolves around AI. I even replaced myself with an AI bot in my online course! So yes, I truly believe that GenAI will change every industry.

But is that change happening right now? In roundtables like the one I just had with Martin Casado from a16z – I hear often that business leaders are still figuring out how to use GenAI. The current advice is that AI should be built into our workflows — and that GenAI will be an adaptation layer to us users, since our workflows and interfaces are so “human.” Sounds logical – but is this actually happening? Or is Silicon Valley just getting ahead of itself?

E-Commerce Is First In AI Adoption

To explore this question, I looked at one specific industry: e-commerce. In my online certificate programs, I’ve explored AI use cases across many industries such as healthcare, media, coffee (yes, coffee), finance, and e-commerce. While healthcare tends to be slowest to adopt AI, e-commerce consistently leads. Targeting ads and emails – e-commerce uses AI. Product recommendations – e-commerce uses AI. Skewing Google’s search results (also called SEO) – e-commerce uses AI. Thus I assume that e-commerce will readily embrace GenAI? Right?

ShopTalk and GenAI

To put this question to the test, I plan to go ShopTalk. For the uninitiated, ShopTalk is often described as the “Super Bowl of e-commerce.” Nearly 700 vendors show off their solutions to brands of all sizes. It’s a buzzing madhouse filled with ads, demos, and lofty promises.

ShopTalk 2025 in Numbers
My team and I analyzed all 683 vendors presenting at ShopTalk. Here’s what we found:

1. AI is #1 – it’s the most mentioned technology: 256 out of 683 vendors — roughly 40% — claim to offer AI capabilities. Well, AI has been around since the 1960s, thus… yes – 40% was less than I expected. Analytics, workflow automation, and data management still dominate.
2. GenAI is #2 – GenAI is second. But a way more distant second than I thought. Only 169 vendors (25%) mention GenAI explicitly. That’s a surprisingly low number given the hype that I see day in and day out. Where is everyone? Virtual Try-On? Products Made to Order?

GenAI & Multimodal Is the Holy Grail

This low percentag for GenAI is surprising because modern foundation models make the Holy Grail of personalization feasible. GenAI has the potential to realize the dream of true 1:1 personalization. Yesterday’s tools rely on manual pre-written templates that are dynamically selected by AI. Take ad targeting as an example. An ad has to be prewritten, the AI — targeting AI — just selects the best ad for a given user. Or take filters on a site. Often shop admins define those and they stay static. The same is true for landing pages. Personalization happens on the margin; real targeted personalized web interfaces do not yet exist. Amazon 1999 and 2025 look essentially the same in functionality.

Real personalization — the kind marketers dream of — would require billions of unique templates, filters, images. That wasn’t feasible up till now. GenAI will change the game.

Happy to dive into the technical background – but in a few words it’s our ability to store (we say “embed”) all kinds of data formats like product data, user-generated content, and images. This multimodality makes it possible to switch and adjust each modality for the user. More more about multimodality in this Forbes article.

ShopTalk — 1% Of 700 Vendors Are About Multimodality

Given this technology shift, I was expecting new category leaders in e-commerce. I assumed search, content personalization and chat bots would all merge into one offering. But the truth is far from that. In my dataset I found only seven (!) companies that offered such a merged solution. Yes that is 1% of all vendors. And yes, only one out of 700 companies was an established player. The remaining six were startups.

ShopTalk — StartUp Showcase

Note: if we can not see GenAI here, we won’t see it anywhere. ShopTalk is the perfect place to spot innovation in action. As the image below shows, about 70% of the companies focused on data and AI were startups. So it’s no surprise that many top VC firms attend the event as well.

It seems early for GenAI! Maybe disruption take longer? Maybe this is like the tale about self-driving cars that we were promised for decades and are only now arrived? Whatever it is, I will walk the floors at ShopTalk and if you want to show me your solution, please do so. Let’s meet in Vegas – Calendly Link here. If you want more of the analysis on all vendors in regards to AI and GenAI, please ping me on LinkedIn – I am happy to share.

DISCLAIMER: If you read this and you are from the ShopTalk team – all our analytics were compiled manually — pen and paper style!