AI Fuels Record $11.8 Billion Black Friday eCommerce Boom

Artificial intelligence-powered shopping tools have helped drive record levels of Black Friday spending this year.

Shoppers spent nearly $12 billion online as the holiday shopping season kicked off, a 9% increase from 2024, Reuters reported Saturday (Nov. 29), citing Adobe Analytics data.

According to those findings, AI-driven traffic to American retail sites surged by 805% since last year, before the launch of AI shopping assistants like Walmart’s Sparky or Amazon’s Rufus.

“Consumers are using new tools to get to what they need faster,” Suzy Davidkhanian, an analyst at eMarketer, told Reuters. “Gift giving can be stressful, and LLMs [large language models] make the discovery process feel quicker and more guided.”

As PYMNTS wrote last week, Rufus and Sparky are part of a broader effort by the retail world to drive growth at a time of ongoing consumer caution.

“The National Retail Federation expects shoppers to collectively spend more than $1 trillion during November and December, a year-over-year increase between 3.7% and 4.2%,” that report said. “Under normal circumstances, this would read as a comfortably optimistic forecast. But in 2025, normal circumstances feel like a relic.”

Research from PYMNTS intelligence has found that 26% of consumers had trouble paying their bills in September, the highest share in at least two years. And Walmart’s recent quarterly earnings showed that value remains the main force shaping consumer behavior, with shoppers increasingly turning to digital channels to find it.

“While the retail landscape hems and haws over the question of whether shoppers will spend enough to rescue a sector that has been wobbling through a year of uneven consumer confidence, persistent supply chain friction and a macroeconomic backdrop that never quite stabilized, category leaders like Walmart and Amazon are increasingly operating under the assumption that the only certainty is the one you build yourself,” PYMNTS wrote.

In related news, PYMNTS last week turned to OpenAI’s ChatGPT to see how the holiday season might unfold. The chatbot said it expected that online channels would maintain the largest share of holiday spending, boosted by AI-powered search, retailer chat assistants, and personalized deals that assist discovery.

However, the model also expects more people will patronize physical stores for apparel try-ons, electronics demos, same-day pickups, and last-minute gifts. This is in keeping with PYMNTS’ 2025 findings, which found that consumers browse online but still visit stores to complete and confirm their purchases.

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