The use of artificial-intelligence in e-commerce is accelerating, with AI agents becoming increasingly capable of completing multistep tasks such as product research and price comparison.

The technology is evolving as its use spreads, and Alphabet, Amazon.com, and Xometry are the best positioned to be winners when it all shakes out, according to Rosenblatt analyst Scott Devitt

Devitt late Wednesday launched coverage on the e-commerce sector with Buy ratings on Amazon, Alphabet, eBay, Etsy, Shopify, Wayfair, and Xometry. The firm has a Neutral rating on Chewy.

Amazon, Alphabet, and Xometry were the firm's top picks in the space.

Alphabet stock declined 0.5% to $343.21 on Thursday while Amazon fell 1% to $263.08. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.3% and 0.6%, respectively.

The analyst noted that e-commerce sales growth is outpacing traditional "offline" retail, and that another quarter of improving momentum could "offer investors comfort that this trend is sustainable rather than a tariff-driven pull-forward."

But changes are coming in how people shop online.

"Agentic commerce is evolving, and early evidence points to compressed discovery funnels rather than complete disintermediation. This benefits smaller marketplaces, like ETSY and EBAY, as merchants will ultimately retain most of the transaction, even if the path to purchase changes," Devitt wrote.

Devitt added that the emergence of AI is now the key to e-commerce names and that Amazon, Alphabet, Xometry, Shopify, eBay, and Wayfair offer the "most tangible examples of AI directly driving revenue and margin today."

The analyst noted that Etsy and Chewy are in earlier stages with AI and are using it primarily to reduce "friction for buyers and sellers within each marketplace."

To no surprise, Alphabet and Amazon are currently the clear front-runners.

"We believe durable winners combine proprietary data or physical moats, a high-margin operation to fund AI investment, and structural data readiness. AMZN and GOOGL have validated their role in this industry transition, and are now well-positioned to compound over an intermediate-term horizon," Devitt wrote.

For Amazon and Alphabet, both are well insulated from AI risks through their compute and data infrastructure. Alphabet has layered new advertisements into its AI Mode and Gemini at a monetization rate approaching traditional searching, Rosenblatt wrote.

The firm also forecasts that Amazon's "Alexa for Shopping," the company's AI assistant for personalized shopping, delivered about $12 billion of incremental annualized sales last year.

Shopify and Xometry, however, aren't far behind and are expanding AI-led functionality across their ecosystems to build resilience against perceived risks to marketplaces, according to Rosenblatt.

These companies' business models "are the most defensible against replacement or disintermediation by AI tools in the coming years," Devitt wrote.

The message is clear: e-commerce is likely to be the main growth-driver in shopping trends and AI agents have added complexity to an already competitive space.

Investors, for now, should stick with the Amazon and Alphabet to play the trend until something else changes.