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MS Manik Surtani On The New Stack Podcast

“I buy running shoes and I put all that stuff into an AI, and it helped me narrow down. So all of a sudden now, that replaces advertising. I'm not looking at a billboard. That's not influencing my decision anymore. It's a conversation with an AI that influenced my decision.”

The New Stack Podcast · Hands-On Engineering Podcasts · November 2026

“I buy running shoes and I put all that stuff into an AI, and it helped me narrow down. So all of a sudden now, that replaces advertising. I'm not looking at a billboard. That's not influencing my decision anymore. It's a conversation with an AI that influenced my decision.” — Manik Surtani, The New Stack Podcast

Context

Asked where the customer journey begins in agentic commerce, Surtani says discovery and persuasion now happen in conversations with AI, well before any purchase, which displaces traditional advertising.

Transcript

The New Stack Podcast Around 22:06 into the episode
Manik Surtani

…exception of X402. X402 is the only protocol or project in that space that is under a neutral foundation. But X402 also only addresses a relatively small slice of Agentic commerce. There's a much, much broader field there that I think still needs to mature. And I'd love to see how that develops.

Nick Lucchesi

So I just want to ask about sort of where the user journey begins for Agentic Commerce. Like, I just want to have Codex buy plane tickets when they go on sale so I can go to Disneyland with my kid later this year. But like, where does that journey begin? How does it even know that I want that?

Manik Surtani

Yes, that's the interesting thing, right, about Agentic Commerce. It's no longer just going and buying the thing the way you'd think in terms of e-commerce. The journey starts way before that. How do you even know where you want to go? What made you even think you wanted to go on holiday? All of this stuff. Like that product discovery side of things all happens now with AI as well. Like a slightly different example, like buying shoes is one that everyone uses buying shoes as an example. It's an easy one that people understand, but it's also a really realistic one. And it happened to me. I was buying a new pair of running shoes and it's like I can go and look for the same pair of running shoes I'm replacing again. Or, you know what? This is, you know, this is the sort of running I do. This is what I like about my shoes. This is what I don't like about my shoes. What should I think about? And I put all that stuff into an AI. And it helped me narrow down. No, check this brand out. You might prefer this. Or narrowed it down to two or three things. So help me…

Nick Lucchesi

Wow. I am certainly sprinting to that future. Thank you so much, Monica. I appreciate it.

Manik Surtani

Was that pun intended? That wasn't fully intended. I like that. Very important.

Nick Lucchesi

All right. Well, thanks so much. Take care.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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