Although ecommerce platform and technology company Salesforce has touted its acquisition of Cimulate for the latter’s search capabilities, there’s more to the deal.
Gordon Evans, chief marketing officer of Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud, told Digital Commerce 360 that the acquisition has expanded Salesforce’s agentic artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Evans noted that Salesforce uses Cimulate technology to provide “context-aware search.”
That means it factors in more than individual keywords in a search. Using a large language model (LLM) called CommerceGPT, merchants can tune Cimulate technology to their sites and product catalogs. From there, it begins to provide what Evans called “intent-aware search.” He said the acquisition came with about 20 customers who are live using the technology and have already seen benefits from it.
“If you go to a western-wear retailer and type in ‘what should I wear to Coachella?’ or ‘what should I wear to’ whatever festival it is, the intent-aware search can understand that you’re probably looking for boots and whatever, a sundress,” Evans told Digital Commerce 360. “But a keyword-based search would return null result. We think there’s this opportunity by using some of this new capability from our Cimulate acquisition around AI-powered contextual search to help improve the shopper experience, whether they’re coming from an organic search or an LLM like ChatGPT.”
In North America, 78 of the Top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform prior to the Cimulate acquisition, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2025, those 78 online retailers combined for more than $192.60 billion in web sales. The Top 2000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database ranking North America’s largest online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales.
What search capabilities does Cimulate have?
The Cimulate has an understanding of natural language, Evans said. It can “infer intent and then provide relevant results based on all the traffic that it models,” he added.
Evans said a key reason Cimulate has seen such results is that it looks at a merchant’s existing catalog and existing search behavior. Then, it models that out.
“They simulate it thousands of times or tens of thousands of times over again,” he said. “So any retailer could have search data essentially just like Amazon would, where you’ve got thousands of different kinds of queries and intent expressions that you can then use to better understand what your customers are shopping for when they hit their site.”
When new trends happen, he said, Cimulate can detect and respond to them “much more quickly than a merchant having to listen on social channels and then update a product catalog.”
Evans said as part of the Cimulate acquisition, Salesforce had a customer with “a pretty technical product catalog with a lot of details.”
That merchant used the Cimulate product on its website. It also used it in its physical stores.
“Store associates started using it and it worked to train them on the product information, and being able to speak more in-depth and connect shoppers to what they’re looking at at a more technical level,” Evans said. “There may be all kinds of use cases that we’re just at the cusp of exploring as we deploy agents across every aspect of how retailers engage with shoppers.”
Agentic AI systems and a new age of convenience
Evans called the realm of agent-to-agent interactions “a nascent area.”
“The concept of an agent, through MCP and being able to orchestrate multiple agents is definitely something that retailers are going to have to think about,” he said.
He also suggested that more specialized agents might be part of a future wave of AI changes.
“I don’t know that the shopper is going to tolerate having to work with multiple agents to find their products,” Evans said. “Having this ‘super agent’ concept to orchestrate information and orchestrate multiple agents will be important to think through.”
He said he can envision use cases in which consumers are going back and forth between comparison shopping within a consumer goods manufacturer’s site and a broader search on an LLM like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. Both types of agentic interfaces will have a role, he said.
“The backdrop for all of this, to me, though, is still the pandemic in a weird way,” Evans said. “We all got trained on ease and convenience and ‘how fast can you get this thing to my doorstep?’ I feel like this is the next natural outcome of that. I don’t want to have to know the specific keywords of a specific blender or vacuum cleaner. I just want to say ‘I need a margarita machine for two dozen people that’s easy to clean.’ That is the next evolution of the speed and ease and convenience that shoppers started to expect from brands during the pandemic.”
Changes in search behavior and traffic due to agentic AI
Agentic commerce will “transform the entire customer journey,” according to Evans. In addition to changing the shopper experience, it will change the merchant experience by helping to manage orders, stores and customer service, he said.
Evans also noted that much of the excitement about traffic coming from LLMs is because of the intent.
“It’s so ‘ready to buy,’ and that is a boon for every retailer,” Evans said. “They come and they’re that much more prepared, instead of filtering through all the refinements of men’s, sweaters, color, size. You can get to what you’re looking for much, much more quickly. That said, you’re still getting a ton — probably the majority of your traffic is still from traditional search or your paid media.”
And although there has “definitely” been an increasing percentage of traffic coming from agents and other AI sources, “it is not all traffic,” he noted.
“That’s the challenge for retailers,” Evans said. “They see the opportunity, but they’ve still got to manage all these other channels to provide the best experience for their shopper regardless of where they’re coming from.”
Do you rank in our databases?
Submit your data and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.
Sign up
Stay on top of the latest developments in the online retail industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and YouTube. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.
FavoriteThe post How Salesforce is using Cimulate search technology appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.
from Digital Commerce 360 https://ift.tt/2tmypnU
0 Comments