What AI Is Doing To Ecommerce Behind The Scenes - CEO, Webscale

In this episode, I sit down with Jay Smith, CEO of Webscale Networks, to discuss how AI is transforming e-commerce, website infrastructure, and the future of online shopping. We explore why website performance still has such a massive impact on revenue, how merchants should prepare for the AI era, and what it really takes to build infrastructure capable of handling billions of dollars in online transactions. Jay shares insights from his background in distributed systems and machine learning, explaining how Webscale helps enterprise e-commerce companies improve performance, personalize customer experiences, defend against bots, and prepare their data for AI-powered search and shopping assistants. We also dive into agentic commerce, answer engine optimization (AEO), AI personalization, cybersecurity, and the challenges businesses face as AI rapidly changes how customers discover and purchase products. Whether you're an AI enthusiast, software engineer, founder, or e-commerce professional, this conversation offers an inside look at where online commerce is headed and what companies need to do to stay competitive in an AI-first world. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 01:04 What Webscale Networks Actually Does 08:25 How AI Is Changing E-commerce Forever 20:16 The Future of Agentic Commerce 27:39 AI Personalization and Customer Experience 40:20 Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) 43:09 Website Performance, Scaling, and Traffic Spikes 48:04 Bots, Fraud, and AI Security 56:01 Why Companies Avoid Replatforming 01:07:47 From CTO to CEO and the Future of E-commerce