Welcome to P3 Media’s AI Commerce Brief, your daily update on the AI and commerce stories shaping how companies build, sell, and grow. It’s Monday, September 28. Let’s get into it.
The biggest infrastructure story comes from Anthropic and Akamai.
Akamai says Anthropic has committed about $11.6 billion over seven years for dedicated cloud capacity and managed support, focused on CPU workloads.
An Akamai filing says the payments depend on delivery and service-availability requirements. Akamai also estimates about $5.5 billion of related capital spending.
The strategic signal is bigger than a vendor contract.
Frontier labs are spreading compute needs across more suppliers, and Akamai is positioning its distributed cloud as part of the AI infrastructure stack.
Microsoft introduced a new Copilot organized around Home, Code, and Autopilot.
Home combines chat and longer-running Cowork tasks. Code lets users describe internal apps, dashboards, and workflows in natural language. Autopilot is designed as a persistent cloud-hosted agent that can run recurring work.
Microsoft says Home and Code will begin rolling out through its Frontier program in the coming weeks, while Autopilot expands to private preview at the end of September.
Long-running agent work and frontier models will use usage-based billing. Microsoft has not published the usage prices.
Lambda announced plans Sunday for a new data center in Mayes County, Oklahoma.
The company estimates the project could generate $500 million in taxes over 10 years, create up to 1,000 construction jobs, and support up to 100 permanent positions.
Lambda says it will pay the facility’s energy costs and use closed-loop cooling. Those are company projections and commitments, not completed outcomes.
The announcement shows how power costs, water use, and community benefits are becoming part of the sales pitch for AI infrastructure.
In commerce, Amazon is pushing Seller Central beyond Amazon’s own marketplace.
Its multichannel tools are rolling out gradually to sellers in the US store over the coming months.
Amazon says sellers will be able to connect eBay, Shopify, TikTok, and Walmart accounts, import and link listings, view orders across those channels, and fulfill orders through Amazon.
The tools carry no additional platform charge, although fulfillment fees still apply.
Amazon describes one-edit listing updates and a combined profitability view with ad spend as later capabilities.
For merchants, the opportunity is simpler operations. The tradeoff is placing more cross-channel data and workflow inside Amazon’s console.
OpenAI also published a security finding worth operators’ attention.
Its researchers demonstrated self-replicating prompt injections in simulated training and evaluation.
In the examples, hidden instructions could cause an agent to copy the attack into an email, a file, or code comments. OpenAI says it observed no impact outside simulated tool calls.
The practical takeaway is to give connected agents narrow permissions, review high-impact actions, and assume untrusted content can carry instructions.
A smaller Shopify change has a firm deadline.
Starting October 23, Shopify Tax and Tax Platform will automatically tax return-shipping fees like other shipping charges for orders sent to US addresses.
Existing shipping-tax settings still apply. Shopify tells merchants using a manual workaround to review it before the change to avoid double counting. Otherwise, the company says no action is required.
The biggest infrastructure story comes from Anthropic and Akamai.
Akamai says Anthropic has committed about $11.6 billion over seven years for dedicated cloud capacity and managed support, focused on CPU workloads.
An Akamai filing says the payments depend on delivery and service-availability requirements. Akamai also estimates about $5.5 billion of related capital spending.
The strategic signal is bigger than a vendor contract.
Frontier labs are spreading compute needs across more suppliers, and Akamai is positioning its distributed cloud as part of the AI infrastructure stack.
Microsoft introduced a new Copilot organized around Home, Code, and Autopilot.
Home combines chat and longer-running Cowork tasks. Code lets users describe internal apps, dashboards, and workflows in natural language. Autopilot is designed as a persistent cloud-hosted agent that can run recurring work.
Microsoft says Home and Code will begin rolling out through its Frontier program in the coming weeks, while Autopilot expands to private preview at the end of September.
Long-running agent work and frontier models will use usage-based billing. Microsoft has not published the usage prices.
Lambda announced plans Sunday for a new data center in Mayes County, Oklahoma.
The company estimates the project could generate $500 million in taxes over 10 years, create up to 1,000 construction jobs, and support up to 100 permanent positions.
Lambda says it will pay the facility’s energy costs and use closed-loop cooling. Those are company projections and commitments, not completed outcomes.
The announcement shows how power costs, water use, and community benefits are becoming part of the sales pitch for AI infrastructure.
In commerce, Amazon is pushing Seller Central beyond Amazon’s own marketplace.
Its multichannel tools are rolling out gradually to sellers in the US store over the coming months.
Amazon says sellers will be able to connect eBay, Shopify, TikTok, and Walmart accounts, import and link listings, view orders across those channels, and fulfill orders through Amazon.
The tools carry no additional platform charge, although fulfillment fees still apply.
Amazon describes one-edit listing updates and a combined profitability view with ad spend as later capabilities.
For merchants, the opportunity is simpler operations. The tradeoff is placing more cross-channel data and workflow inside Amazon’s console.
OpenAI also published a security finding worth operators’ attention.
Its researchers demonstrated self-replicating prompt injections in simulated training and evaluation.
In the examples, hidden instructions could cause an agent to copy the attack into an email, a file, or code comments. OpenAI says it observed no impact outside simulated tool calls.
The practical takeaway is to give connected agents narrow permissions, review high-impact actions, and assume untrusted content can carry instructions.
A smaller Shopify change has a firm deadline.
Starting October 23, Shopify Tax and Tax Platform will automatically tax return-shipping fees like other shipping charges for orders sent to US addresses.
Existing shipping-tax settings still apply. Shopify tells merchants using a manual workaround to review it before the change to avoid double counting. Otherwise, the company says no action is required.
