Remember when Warby Parker launched in 2010 and everyone thought they were crazy? Selling eyeglasses online without stores or retail partners seemed impossible. Cut to today, and D2C (Direct to Consumer) brands have reshaped entire industries. They proved you could cut out the middleman, skip traditional retail, and go straight to customers.
Now we're on the cusp of another disintermediation revolution, and it's going to be even more radical: D2A, or Direct to Agent.
D2C companies eliminated the retailer between brand and consumer. D2A companies are about to eliminate the consumer-facing interface entirely.
Right now, when you ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Google's Gemini a question, they give you information. But these AI assistants are rapidly becoming true agents—systems that don't just inform but act on your behalf. They're learning to book your flights, order your groceries, manage your calendar, and make purchases for you.
The consumer-facing AI landscape is consolidating around a handful of players: ChatGPT, Google, Meta, Claude, Perplexity, and Amazon are positioned to own the primary interface between consumers and AI. Within a few years, a lot of people won't interact with businesses directly. They'll ask their AI agent to handle it.
This creates an entirely new opportunity: businesses that skip the consumer interface completely and optimize exclusively for AI agents.
Imagine a hotel chain that doesn't have a website. No mobile app. No Instagram account. No carefully designed booking interface with beautiful photos and persuasive copy.
Instead, they've invested everything into ensuring that when your AI agent needs to book a hotel, their properties show up as the optimal choice. They have perfect real-time data feeds, seamless payment integration, and machine-readable information about amenities, availability, and pricing.
This is D2A. Just as D2C brands like Casper or Dollar Shave Club bypassed retailers, D2A businesses bypass the entire consumer-facing layer. They go direct to the agents that will increasingly make decisions on our behalf.
Three critical protocols are emerging that make D2A businesses possible:
Data sharing via Model Context Protocol (MCP): This establishes standards for how businesses share real-time information with AI systems—inventory, pricing, availability, capabilities. It's the language that lets agents understand what you offer.
Payment processing via Agent Payment/Commerce Protocols: Google and OpenAI are building the infrastructure for AI agents to make purchases on behalf of users, handling not just transactions but authorization and trust.
Product discovery via structured data feeds: Rather than SEO-optimized content for human readers, D2A businesses create machine-readable information designed for AI comprehension and evaluation.
If these sound technical, think of them this way: When credit cards emerged, businesses that didn't accept them were at a massive disadvantage. When e-commerce emerged, businesses without websites struggled. D2A protocols are the next evolution—and businesses that don't accept purchases from AI agents will be left behind.
The D2A revolution isn't coming out of nowhere. We've seen similar shifts before:
D2C cut out retailers → D2A cuts out consumer interfaces
D2C invested in logistics and customer experience → D2A invests in data quality and API reliability
D2C built brands through performance marketing → D2A optimizes for agent recommendation algorithms
D2C needed e-commerce platforms like Shopify → D2A needs agent commerce protocols
The companies best positioned for D2A might actually be those who never built strong consumer brands in the first place. Just as Twilio built a billion-dollar business with developer-friendly APIs instead of consumer products, D2A companies will win by being the best answer when an AI agent evaluates options—regardless of whether humans have heard of them.
The D2C revolution took over a decade. Warby Parker launched in 2010, but D2C brands didn't truly reshape retail until the late 2010s. D2A will move faster for two key reasons:
Agents can switch instantly: Consumers developed loyalty to D2C brands over time. AI agents can evaluate every option on every transaction and switch based purely on optimization.
The technology is ready now: D2C had to wait for smartphones and mobile payments to mature. The protocols enabling D2A are being built today by the biggest tech companies in the world.
If you're running a business today, you need to ask yourself several questions:
What does your "brand" mean in a D2A world? Consumer brands spend millions on awareness and emotional connection. D2A businesses will compete on data quality, reliability, and integration speed. Your "brand" to an AI agent is all about what the AI reads vs. an emotional response to an ad.
Should you be building for both? Most businesses will need to serve both human customers (D2C) and AI agents (D2A). But increasingly, startups will launch as D2A-first, just as many launched D2C-first in the 2010s. The D2A model will be pioneered by new companies, just as D2C was. For the incumbents, the D2A channel will likely be a pocket for growth or a risk of disruption longer term.
