• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 27, 2025

Perplexity.ai and Firmly.ai, an agentic commerce platform, have partnered to change ecommerce by developing a native checkout system to improve the shopping experience.

Kumar Senthil, co-founder and chief executive officer of firmly.ai, believes the partnership will change commerce by combining its native checkout technology with Perplexity’s AI.

It not only simplifies the shopping process but also empowers merchants to reach new customers without integration challenges.

"We have been in stealth mode for the past five years putting AI to use to solve the myriad of challenges associated with integrating merchants who run on different platforms, including their own custom platforms," Senthil told MediaPost. "This makes the channels, like Perplexity, to do just one integration with firmly to connect to any merchant a better solution."

Merchants face integrating individually each channel as the number of consumer touchpoints grows.

"It’s untenable to integrate with each of these channels, maintain and operate them," Senthil said. 

With one integration to firmly.ai's API, Perplexity can connect brands and retailers to any ecommerce merchant or new sales channel while retaining their merchant of record (MOR) status. There’s no need to use any engineering resources to start selling on Perplexity the companies said.

Earlier this week, Aravind Srinivas, chief executive officer of Perplexity, wrote on X, “Native transactions are the best way to go after the AdWords revenue. It will take a while to get right and make it seamless. Google is positioned in an evil but legal way to claim maximum credit for any brand awareness that another platform (research or social) provides users. “

Most important in this partnership, merchants remain in control of transactions, customer relationships, and data. They can access millions of potential customers while protecting the value of their brand.

For years, large internet companies like Google, Facebook and Pinterest have struggled to find the exact match to bring ecommerce to their platforms -- such as Amazon and eBay.

Perplexity doesn’t take a percentage of each sale made through its search results, so retailers that sell through the firmly integration will receive all from each purchase.

This week, Perplexity also introduced answer modes to make the core search product better for verticals such as travel, shopping, places, images, videos, and jobs.

“The next step is to get super precise that you don't have to press on these tabs. Available on web for now,” Srinivas wrote on X. “Mobile soon.”

Update: Additional comments by Senthil to MediaPost were added.