Syndigo Connect 2026 brought together commerce leaders, practitioners, and partners at a moment when the commerce landscape feels full of both promise and intense complexity. It was by far the biggest yet, gathering hundreds of representatives from leading players across the commerce ecosystem in Las Vegas for three days of networking, inspiration, and learning how to stay ahead on every shelf in a constantly shifting marketplace.
A lot has changed since last year’s edition of the premier conference for Product Experience Management. Agentic Commerce is no longer theoretical. Product content has never been more critical. Customer journeys are evolving. The market is moving faster than ever.
In one particularly candid reflection on the current climate, AI pioneer and senior Harvard fellow Sol Rashidi put words to the sensation many in the industry are feeling: “I’ve been there during Y2K, I’ve been there during the dotcom era, Hadoop clusters, Big Data, Web 3.0, Metaverse, blockchain, digital transformation…this is the first time I’m being told to go run with scissors, and I know we all feel it too. Because the pressure is intense. The pace is intense. And we’re saying ‘Go!, Go!’ because we don’t want to be left behind.”
Across conversations before and during the event, this sentiment surfaced again and again. Everyone understands they need be to doing something, but it’s not always clear where to focus, how to scale, or how to turn ambition into action. Connect was all about bringing clarity, confidence, and focus to this uncertainty.
Setting the Stage: Finding Success on EVERY Shelf
This theme set the tone from the very start of the event. In the event kickoff, Infinite Possibilities — Powering the Age of Agentic Commerce, Syndigo CEO Simon Angove set the stage with what becomes possible when trusted data, AI, and human insight work together at scale.
Simon contextualized the scale of the agentic commerce trend, cautioning that while it was important to take advantage of this new and growing component of the digital shelf, it was still just one component of a blended multichannel shopping journey that will not suddenly replace the others. “There is an awful lot of AI and agentic commerce hype in the market,” he said, “many predicting the demise of traditional commerce in the face of AI. This is not our perspective.”
Instead, brands and retailers need to continue optimizing their product experience everywhere their customers shop. Simon pointed to agentic commerce not as a channel killer, but a competitive new part of the path to purchase that is likely to influence most of the revenue growth available in the coming years.
“The question every brand is asking right now is, When an AI agent is making a purchase decision on someone’s behalf, will my product show up, be understood, trusted, recommended, purchased?” Simon added. “That’s the new battleground. Not just the digital shelf; the AI shelf. And the brands that win it are the ones whose data is structured, validated, and connected to where AI is actually making decisions.”
From AI Hype to Operational Reality
That message carried directly into the opening keynote from Stratably CEO Russ Dieringer, The Next Frontier of Intelligent Commerce — From Hype to How, where research-backed insights reinforced the shift from AI experimentation to real-world results and how to discern hype from the “real thing.” Russ presented evidence showing that despite the buzz, the current state of AI-driven commerce is uncertain and difficult to measure:
- One high-profile McKinsey study found that 10% of consumers used AI to shop, while research from Acosta around the same time put that number at 70%
- 60% of traffic driven from ChatGPT is classified incorrectly as direct traffic, demonstrating a significant attribution challenge
- Once heralded as a new retail channel set to dominate ecommerce, ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout was put on pause after running into stumbling blocks
But despite the complications, Russ also expressed confidence that AI would eventually be a key driver of growth for brands and retailers moving forward, pointing out that 99% of Walmart’s growth is currently through digital channels. “We can have FOMO, we can have the hand wringing – but we should also feel optimistic and excited; this is cool work that we’re getting to do,” he said.
AI hype may dominate headlines, but sessions throughout the event consistently reinforced that success comes primarily from embedding intelligence directly into everyday PXM workflows and building a reliable foundation of data and content to power any need.
Conversations and presentations throughout the event challenged attendees to rethink how intelligence shows up in their organizations:
- AI is most impactful when it moves with the business, not alongside it
- Intelligence must be governed, observable, and accountable
- Automation without context creates risk, not resilience
- AI can’t effectively act without accurate, reliable, accessible data to inform decisions
Rather than positioning AI as a replacement for people, speakers throughout the event emphasized a model where humans provide direction and purpose while intelligent systems support execution at speed and scale.
“Let AI handle some of the execution, but you must handle the thinking behind it. Outsource tasks – not your critical thinking. Please, if you’re in a position, to hire early-career adults; they are our governance of the future… And always, as a philosophy, be human-led and AI-powered, not the other way around. Don’t lose the soul in what we do.”
Trusted Product Data: The Essential Foundation for Commerce on Every Shelf
If AI was the headline of the event, trusted product data was the throughline.
Across sessions covering PXM, PIM, GDSN, analytics, governance and more, speakers returned time and again to the same reality: commerce only works when parties across the supply chain can rely on connected, high-quality, accessible data. From ecommerce to supply chain logistics to marketing to compliance to AI interfaces, it’s the non-negotiable foundation for success.
As commerce environments grow more complex with expanding retailer requirements, regulatory pressures, and content demands, manual workflows and disconnected systems struggle more and more to keep up.
The Future of Agentic Commerce: A Fireside Chat with Ameca
Discussions highlighted why multi-domain data mastery matters more than ever. Product, supplier, location, compliance, and performance data need to be unified, governance and quality can’t be afterthoughts, and data readiness directly affects speed to shelf, visibility, and conversion.
Rather than treating data as a back-office responsibility, sessions reframed it as the infrastructure powering every customer interaction and AI-driven decision. Syndigo leaders shared the company’s vision for addressing these challenges today and into the future, laying out an innovation roadmap focused on providing a flexible foundation for growth.
Highlighted focus areas for 2026 innovation included:
- Introducing Synapse as the operating model for Agentic PXM, embedding AI agents into core workflows to automate execution while maintaining governance and control across the product lifecycle
- Further integration of GDSN and User-Generated Content capabilities into the Syndigo ecosystem from our recent 1WorldSync and PowerReviews acquisition
- Updating the user experience for the Product Experience Cloud for Brands, streamlining Vendor Product Onboarding, Vendor Management, Assortment Planning, PIM, and MDM all into “one pane of glass”
- Expanding foundation MDM capabilities to better power modern commerce, like rolling out Agentic MDM and making improvements to our App SDK to enable customizable integration and extension into other platforms
The innovation and inspiration offered by speakers and breakout discussions offered attendees some much-needed confidence and focus as they head into the rest of the year.
“Syndigo Connect 2026 was a strong signal that product content is becoming a strategic capability,” said an attendee from General Mills. “The organizations that win will not just have more content — they will have better structured, more accurate, more complete, and more AI-usable content that works across ecommerce, distributors, search, and sales enablement. The opportunity now is to accelerate execution, align cross-functionally, and make sure our best products are represented with the quality the market is increasingly expecting.”
Product Experience as a Continuous, Adaptive System
Another consistent theme from Connect was the clear evolution of product experience management beyond a static “set it and forget it” discipline. It’s a living system that must continuously adapt as consumer expectations, retailer rules, and performance signals change.
Breakout sessions and user trainings gave both hands-on teams and senior leaders a clear path from strategy to day-to-day execution.
For practitioners, sessions went deep on the operational work that makes PXM perform: building PIM workflows to improve accuracy and velocity, smarter syndication at scale, navigating retailer requirements management, attribute mapping and transformation (AVMT), automation to accelerate enhanced content, and even building private apps through the Apps SDK to extend capabilities.
For functional leaders and executives, breakouts focused on the cross-enterprise foundations required to scale master data and governance as the backbone of trusted product information, operating models that shorten time to market, consistent content across both digital and physical shelves, and responsible expansion across compliance and sustainability.
Across tracks, the emphasis stayed practical and measurable: turning better data, better workflows, and stronger governance into faster launches, higher conversion, and an organization that can adapt as channels, including the emerging AI shelf, continue to change.
A Defining Moment in Agentic PXM: Introducing SynapseGo
A major highlight of Syndigo Connect 2026 was the introduction of SynapseGo, marking an important step forward in making agentic commerce practical and accessible for everyday teams.
While much of the industry is still debating what agentic commerce might look like, SynapseGo is designed to help organizations begin putting it into practice quickly and confidently.
At a high level, SynapseGo is focused on helping teams get started with agentic workflows faster, applying agentic intelligence to common, high-value product operations, and translating strategy into execution without overwhelming complexity.
“Agentic PXM only delivers value when business users can actually put it to work,” said Tarun Chandrasekhar, Syndigo’s Chief Product Officer. “With SynapseGo, we’re making agentic workflows approachable and actionable. Teams can simply state their intent, oversee execution, and stay in control, while Synapse handles the complexity behind the scenes.”
SynapseGo builds on the broader Synapse agentic foundation, focusing on adoption, activation, and real-world use. Aligning with broader event themes, it reinforced the recurring message of transitioning from PXM intelligence theory to practical operation.
Collaboration, Community, and Shared Momentum
Beyond the stage content, Syndigo Connect made space for deeper, more candid conversations. Advisory board sessions, peer discussions, partner announcements, and informal networking created opportunities for attendees to share what’s working; and what isn’t.
“I had a great time at the Connect event!” shared Patrick Larson, Digital Retail Marketing Content Specialist for NOW. “Meeting retailers, other brand teams, and speaking directly to Syndigo leads were my biggest takeaways from the event. I left with a lot of new connections and leads to better help NOW in the future.”
Common threads from these conversations included the need for clearer prioritization amid constant change, the desire to forge stronger relationships between brands and retailers, and a growing recognition that progress toward agentic commerce is a shared journey that includes actors across the commerce ecosystem.
One development that was particularly exciting to attendees was the announcement of a new partnership between Syndigo and DetailPage. The partnership combines DetailPage’s deep analysis of shopper signals with Syndigo’s product content ecosystem, empowering brands to move beyond content compliance to optimize conversion, search relevance, and AI-powered discovery.
Syndigo and DetailPage Partner to Improve Digital Shelf Performance, Conversion, and AI-Powered Search Visibility
These discussions reinforced the importance of community in navigating the next chapter of commerce—no organization is solving these challenges alone.
Powerful Lessons: What Attendees Are Taking Back Home
As Syndigo Connect 2026 wrapped up, a few takeaways stood out to attendees:
- Trusted, connected data is vital for success on every shelf, from in-store to AI interfaces
- Product experience is an operational capability, not a side project
- Agentic commerce is already taking shape—practically, not hypothetically
- The path forward favors systems that adapt, coordinate, and scale
Most importantly, attendees left with clearer direction on where to focus and invest next—and how to translate their vision into day-to-day impact.
The event continues to grow each year, evolving from a user conference into one of the industry’s largest and most exciting gatherings for product experience leaders from around the commerce community.
We’re already planning for next year’s Connect, and it’s shaping up to be even better—stay tuned for details. In the meantime, be sure to connect with the Syndigo team at our other upcoming events—including our upcoming Connect events in Europe!
