Author: Marc Bain
The agents are coming.For months now tech giants like Google and OpenAI have been introducing AI agents that can carry out actions on a shopper’s behalf and make purchases for them on e-commerce sites. Their ambition is rooted in the growing role AI is playing in shopping, which — while still small — is rapidly growing. Retailers and e-commerce platforms are rushing to get ready. Companies like Shopify, Etsy and Walmart have been creating alliances with the tech giants to make sure consumers are able to discover, compare and buy products from their sites seamlessly within tools like Gemini and…
Osmo, an AI-powered scent design platform based in New York, announced a new $70 million funding round Wednesday as the company looks to scale its operations.The company will use the funds to expand its team and continue developing the AI models that are the foundation of its business, Osmo’s founder and chief executive Alex Wiltschko told The Business of Beauty.The company, which spun out of an AI research project at Google in late 2022, uses AI to map the relationships between scents, allowing it to anticipate what a fragrance molecule would smell like from its structure, or plot it against…
Subscribe to Tech Mode with Marc Bain, a deep dive into the most intriguing developments in artificial intelligence and its impact on the fashion industry.Dear BoF Community,Welcome back to Tech Mode, your monthly guide to how AI and other technologies are reshaping the fashion industry.First, PVH Corp, owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, announced a collaboration with OpenAI on Tuesday that will see them co-creating custom AI capabilities in areas such as design, demand planning and customer engagement. It’s the first such fashion deal OpenAI has struck that I’m aware of and will be one to watch.Also, the heat…
The Aura Blockchain Consortium has a new leader in its effort to create digital identities for the world’s luxury goods.On Thursday, the group announced the appointment of Marcel Härtlein, previously group head of digital and IT at crystal maker Lalique — itself an Aura member — as its new chief executive and general secretary.Härtlein becomes Aura’s third CEO since its founding in 2021 by an alliance of luxury players including LVMH, Prada, Richemont-owned Cartier and later OTB Group. The companies sought to create blockchain-based digital identities — now commonly called digital product passports, or DPPs — for their goods as…
Subscribe to Tech Mode with Marc Bain, a deep dive into the most intriguing developments in artificial intelligence and its impact on the fashion industry.By all indications, 2026 is set to be another year that will see fashion’s continued remaking by technology, especially AI. It won’t all go smoothly. Technological progress is often “two steps forward, one step back.” In December, for instance, The Information reported that Salesforce — one of the biggest cheerleaders of businesses rethinking their operations around AI and AI agents — was reducing some of its Agentforce platform’s reliance on large language models. Because these models…
Nike’s ownership of RTFKT has come to an end.The company quietly offloaded the virtual sneaker brand in a sale last month.“RTFKT transitioned to a new owner on December 17, launching a new chapter for the company and its community,” Nike said in a statement. The company did not disclose the terms of the sale or the buyer. The Oregonian was first to report the news.RTFKT, which Nike bought in a surprise move at the height of the NFT craze in 2021, had long since wound down operations. In December 2024, shortly after Elliott Hill took over as Nike’s new chief…
Large language models are already transforming the way consumers find and buy products, letting them ask questions in natural language to get more tailored recommendations than what they typically receive from traditional keyword searches. That’s just the start. In September 2025, OpenAI announced deals with Shopify and Etsy to let shoppers buy from their platforms directly through ChatGPT, while Google and Perplexity have unveiled agents that can complete purchases on a shopper’s behalf.At the moment, shopping is still just a fraction of consumers’ total use of AI. Researchers found 2.1 percent of a sample of 1.1 million messages sent to…
Subscribe to Tech Mode with Marc Bain, a deep dive into the most intriguing developments in artificial intelligence and its impact on the fashion industry.Dear BoF Community,Welcome back to Tech Mode, your monthly guide to how AI and other technologies are reshaping the fashion industry.If you’re in the US, I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving, and if you’re not (or don’t celebrate the holiday), I hope you enjoyed the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping rush, which has become an international phenomenon. This is the season when retailers are competing their hardest to win customers. In the US this…
EssilorLuxottica and Meta reached a new milestone in their six-year-old partnership in September 2025 when they introduced the Meta Ray-Ban Display, their first smart glasses with an in-lens display, controlled via a bracelet that translates hand gestures into actions. The glasses offered capabilities like letting the wearer read text messages, see a transcription of what a speaker is saying or get turn-by-turn navigation. Just as important: They still look like regular glasses. For more than a decade, tech companies promised that smart glasses would be the next breakthrough consumer device. They never connected with mainstream shoppers, however, because to make…
OXFORDSHIRE, United Kingdom — There’s a growing sense of unease about technology, and artificial intelligence in particular. Society is overwhelmed by information and noise on social media, while AI has the appearance of a rapidly expanding bubble ready to pop.Yet at its best, technology can also be a powerful force for bringing people together and connecting companies to their customers.These contradictions were the subject of the third session of BoF VOICES 2025, BoF’s annual gathering for big thinkers. Entrepreneur and futurist Azeem Azhar pointed out in conversation with The Economist’s Kenneth Cukier that roughly a billion people now use tools…