INDEX

1. Executive intelligence: the 12 numbers explaining the shift
2. Luxury’s new battleground: from attention to algorithmic recommendation
3. The highest-value customer is adopting AI faster than many maisons
4. The hundreds-of-billions problem: how much commerce could be exposed to AI intermediation
5. ChatGPT, Google, Gemini, Shopify and Copilot: who is building the new distribution layer
6. How the luxury customer journey actually changes
7. The new bottleneck: being selected before being visited
8. Sector benchmark: which luxury categories are most exposed
9. Fashion, beauty, watches & jewellery, hospitality and luxury real estate: five different models
10. The opportunity: where the economic value sits
11. Agentic-commerce economics: CAC, conversion, margin and first-party data
12. Winners and losers in the emerging ecosystem
13. The hidden risk: platforms capture intent while maisons merely receive transactions
14. LUXONOMY Agentic Luxury Readiness Index™: a 100-point framework
15. Three scenarios for 2027–2030
16. What executives should do now: 90-, 180- and 365-day action plan
17. Investment and strategy conclusion

Luxury’s new gatekeeper is no longer human: the battle to control the billions that AI agents will influence

The luxury industry is entering a transformation far deeper than adding artificial intelligence to marketing, customer service or productivity. A new intermediary is emerging between the maison and the consumer: a machine capable of researching, comparing, recommending and progressively purchasing on the customer’s behalf. The data suggests the shift is starting precisely where the economic value is highest.

In 2026, 82% of luxury’s highest-spending customers had already used an AI tool during their most recent purchase journey, compared with 28% among lighter spenders. Usage reaches 64% in China and 54% in the United States. Meanwhile, only 22% of luxury houses currently rank AI among their top three strategic priorities. More importantly, 70% of luxury-related generative-AI prompts do not initially mention a brand, while roughly seven out of ten major maisons fail to achieve generative visibility proportional to their market weight.

At the infrastructure level, Google is operating a Shopping Graph containing more than 60 billion product listings and servicing more than one billion shopping interactions every day. Shopify is connecting millions of merchants to AI conversations, while OpenAI has created infrastructure allowing merchants to provide product catalogues directly to ChatGPT.

The question is no longer whether AI will influence luxury.

It is who will control recommendation before the sale even begins.