Agentic DeliveryOS: Delivery ready for AI agents

AI agents are changing how people discover and buy products online. As they do, what delivery costs and how reliably it arrives become part of the purchase decision itself. Ingrid, the Swedish delivery intelligence platform, is launching Agentic DeliveryOS: a new strategic direction in which fixed rules and manual work are gradually replaced by connected data and AI-driven decisions. For retailers, the groundwork for that shift starts today.

When an AI agent searches for a product, it can compare several retailers at once. Alongside price and product, it weighs delivery options, cost, promised date, reliability and return terms. A retailer that only says "fast delivery" or gives a wide time window hands the agent far less to work with than one that can make a clear, credible promise for that specific order.

Data from Ingrid shows that 45% of online purchase decisions are linked to delivery cost and convenience. As AI agents gain more influence over which retailer gets chosen, a retailer's operational capability becomes visible before the purchase and turns into part of the competition for the shopper.

"AI agents can compare more details than a person could reasonably check on every purchase. That's why retailers need to show their operational capability from the very first touchpoint, with a delivery promise that's clear, reliable and machine-readable. Retailers who wait may be passed over before the shopper even reaches checkout," says Piotr Zaleski, co-founder and Chief Product and Technology Officer at Ingrid.

From manual work to decisions for every order

Many retailers still run delivery on fixed rules, separate systems and a lot of manual work. E-commerce teams work to lift conversion while logistics teams work to cut costs, and customer service is left to fix problems after they've happened. When the work runs in separate streams, every shopper often sees the same delivery options, exceptions get investigated by hand and valuable information about what shoppers actually prefer is lost before the next decision.

The potential upside is significant. McKinsey & Company and EuroCommerce estimate that a full-scale AI transformation could create €240–320 billion in economic value for European retail over the next five years, through higher sales, better margins and increased productivity. The report also points out that this value only materializes once AI is built into core workflows and used at scale.

"The big opportunity lies in day-to-day operations. AI can take over many of the tasks that are done manually today, reason based on the situation at hand and act across the entire delivery flow. That's a shift earlier generations of rule-based SaaS tools haven't been able to make," says Piotr Zaleski.

Agentic DeliveryOS is Ingrid's new direction for delivery management, in which AI and automation gradually take on a larger role in how decisions are made and optimized. Delivery management isn't fully autonomous today. The idea is to bring shopper and order data together with carrier cost and performance data and the retailer's own business goals.

Retailers set the goals and limits. The system can then gradually take on more responsibility for recommending or making decisions, such as which options shoppers see, which delivery date can be promised, how options are ranked and priced, and how exceptions and returns are handled.

This direction builds on capabilities Ingrid already offers, including delivery time predictions, profitability-based ranking of delivery options, API-first infrastructure and a customizable Experience Kit for checkout. With Agentic DeliveryOS, Ingrid connects these capabilities so that more decisions can be automated and tailored to each order, rather than governed by general rules.

Three shifts to prepare for over the next five years

Piotr Zaleski sees three changes that retailers can start preparing for now.

1. AI agents become a new way into retail. More and more purchases will be researched or completed by agents that compare the full offer. Machine-readable, reliable delivery and returns information will decide which retailers get recommended at all.
2. The static checkout gives way to personalized, dynamic options. One list of options for everyone is replaced by choices that reflect the shopper's situation, past behavior, the order and current delivery capacity. Price and delivery promise can adjust in real time instead of being changed by hand a few times a year.
3. Manual delivery decisions move to specialized AI agents. Over time, agents will monitor flows, handle exceptions and balance shopper experience, conversion and cost for every order. People set the goals, rules and limits, while automation takes on a growing share of the day-to-day work.

Personalized options can start at checkout

For shoppers, the change can be very tangible. Someone who lives in a city apartment and regularly picks a parcel locker can see that option at the top automatically, without clicking past options that don't apply to them. A shopper in a single-family home who usually prefers home delivery can see that option prioritized instead. In both cases, the shopper can get a more precise delivery date and avoid planning several days around an uncertain time window.

The shift spans the whole customer journey. Over time, a returning or loyal shopper could receive special delivery or returns terms, while a delay can be spotted and handled before the shopper needs to contact customer service. The same data then feeds back into the system, so each outcome improves the next decision.

Swedish retailers could get a head start

Sweden is the market where Ingrid holds the most delivery and shopper data, and the highest share of identifiable e-commerce shoppers. According to Ingrid, this gives Swedish retailers a better chance to benefit early from relevant recommendations and personalized delivery options, because the models can learn from a larger volume of local behavior and outcomes.

Swedish Delivery Experience Index 2026 by Ingrid, Wahsel and Insitepart also shows why personalization matters. In the survey, 28% of respondents say they'd consider paying more for a slower but more convenient option, compared with 17% who'd pay extra for the fastest delivery. There's no single "best" delivery option, in other words. The value depends on the shopper and the situation.

Piotr admits: "Sweden is particularly well positioned because we already have so much local data on how deliveries are actually chosen and how they perform. But technology doesn't create value on its own. Retailers need to start collecting the right data, connecting their flows and deciding which goals AI should optimize for. That work should start now."

With Agentic DeliveryOS, Ingrid aims to gradually turn delivery from a fragmented, manually managed process into a connected operation, where more decisions are made automatically within the goals and limits each retailer sets.

Want to keep reading and get deeper? Read Delivery in Agentic Commerce: 2027-2030 →

About Ingrid

Delivery is the last untapped commercial lever in retail. Yet many retailers still run it as a patchwork of systems and static rules stitched together for a different era. Ingrid Agentic DeliveryOS is the operating system for agentic-ready retail delivery. It brings shopper, retailer and carrier intelligence together so every decision is made with full context: which options each shopper sees, what's promised, how it's priced, and how orders are tracked, returned and exchanged. More than 250 retailers, including Paul Smith, Nelly.com, Nordic Nest, Åhléns,  Gant, ME+EM and NA-KD, use Ingrid across 170+ markets and 350+ carrier integrations.

Want to explore what DeliveryOS means for your business? Book a demo →