Agentic commerce is all the rage and PayPal wants to be part of the action.
The fintech titan says it has reached an agreement to acquire Tel Aviv-based Cymbio, a multi-channel commerce platform designed to help brands sell across AI-powered shopping environments and traditional e-commerce channels.
The move is aimed at strengthening PayPal’s “agentic commerce” strategy—tools that let merchants make their product catalogs easier to surface, purchase, and fulfill in emerging AI shopping assistants such as Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity.
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026, pending customary closing conditions. Financial terms were not disclosed, although some media reports in Israel reckon it’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The acquisition comes as major technology platforms race to embed shopping into AI experiences, changing how consumers discover products and how merchants compete for attention. Recently, Revolut and Google teamed up to do that.
PayPal’s move suggests the company expects AI platforms to become a major retail gateway, similar to how marketplaces and social commerce reshaped online shopping over the last decade.
Deal details and rationale
PayPal said Cymbio will help “tens of millions of merchants become discoverable on leading AI platforms,” positioning the acquisition as a scale play: taking a product that has already been used inside PayPal’s agentic commerce services and expanding it across PayPal’s vast merchant base.
Cymbio specializes in “multi-channel orchestration,” a layer of infrastructure that helps brands manage selling across multiple surfaces at once. These can include AI interfaces, online marketplaces, retail partner sites, and social commerce platforms. In practice, orchestration tools are designed to reduce the manual work of maintaining product listings, inventory accuracy, order routing, and billing across multiple selling environments.
PayPal had already partnered with Cymbio before the acquisition announcement, using the company as part of its agentic commerce services. That existing relationship likely reduces integration risk, since the technology is already embedded into PayPal’s roadmap and merchant offerings.
What PayPal’s agentic commerce services do
PayPal said its agentic commerce services and checkout options are currently available for merchants on Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity, with broader expansion planned.
PayPal also said OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini app and AI Mode are “coming soon,” signaling that it expects AI shopping to become widespread across multiple consumer platforms rather than concentrated in one ecosystem.
This matters because the more AI environments that support shopping, the more merchants will need consistent product data, inventory accuracy, and fulfillment reliability across all of them. A single wrong inventory count or delayed order confirmation can lead to poor customer experiences and reduced AI recommendations in the future.
Store Sync becomes a core asset after the acquisition
PayPal said Cymbio’s team and technology will support Store Sync, a product within PayPal’s agentic commerce services portfolio. Store Sync is designed to make product data “discoverable within AI channels” while also enabling order routing into merchants’ fulfillment and management systems.
PayPal emphasized that merchants will “remain the merchant of record and retain customer relationships and control over their brand.”
That distinction is important in a market where many platforms attempt to intermediate customer relationships. If merchants lose access to customer data or branding control, they risk becoming commoditized suppliers rather than differentiated retailers. By keeping merchants as the merchant of record, PayPal appears to be positioning itself as an infrastructure partner rather than a storefront operator.
Several merchants are already live using Store Sync through Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Fabletics, Ashley Furniture, Newegg, and Adorama. The presence of both fashion and home goods brands suggests PayPal believes agentic commerce will be broadly applicable across categories, not limited to small-ticket or digital products.
What to watch next
With the closing expected in the first half of 2026, investors and merchants will be watching for how quickly PayPal can roll out Cymbio’s capabilities across its merchant base, and whether PayPal can become a default checkout option inside AI assistants.
The bigger implication is the emergence of agentic commerce as a mainstream channel, where AI tools don’t just recommend products but also help complete purchases, coordinate fulfillment, and potentially influence which merchants win customer attention.
PayPal’s venture capital arm is spearheading a substantial funding round for a payments startup that helps businesses handle transactions.
