On October 6, 2026, Algolia announced that it had acquired Velou, a New York company that turns product imagery and catalog content into structured, retail-specific product data. A week later, on October 13, Forter launched its Agentic Commerce Engine for merchants selling to AI shopping agents. One move works on the product record and the other on checkout, and an AI-assisted sale has to clear both.
Algolia's case for the deal rests on the record itself. "When the underlying product record gets richer, every experience reasoning over it gets better," the company wrote, adding that the enriched record that fixes a store's search bar is the same one that makes its catalog readable to an agent. For a brand, the attributes an assistant needs to match a product to a shopper's question have to be in the product data before any assistant can use them.
Forter's numbers show why checkout is getting its own tools. AI agent orders across Forter's network have more than quadrupled since August, and automated fraud doubled in the two months before the launch. Eran Vanounou, Forter's chief technology and product officer, said every merchant is now effectively opted in to AI shopping, whether or not they have prepared for it.
The engine separates legitimate AI assistants from fraud and abuse bots in real time and supports headless checkout, so a merchant can set the conditions under which agents buy. A dashboard shows which AI agents are transacting on the site, which lets the merchant choose the agents it accepts.
The product data gate is the one a marketing team controls. For the questions your shoppers ask most often, confirm that the attributes an answer depends on, such as size or material, are written into your catalog data as well as shown in photos. The checkout gate usually sits with whoever runs payments and fraud, and the question for that team is whether a legitimate agent's order would clear the fraud rules you run now.
Common questions
What did Algolia buy?
Velou, a New York-based product intelligence company that turns product imagery and catalog content into structured, retail-specific product data. Algolia announced the acquisition on October 6, 2026.
What does Forter's Agentic Commerce Engine do?
Launched on October 13, 2026, it separates legitimate AI assistants from fraud and abuse bots and supports headless checkout for agents. A dashboard shows merchants which AI agents are transacting on their site.
How fast are AI agent orders growing?
On Forter's network, AI agent orders more than quadrupled between August and mid-October 2026, while automated fraud doubled over the two months before October 13.