- Strategic collaboration to bring together retail, finance, and lifestyle data across AEON entities to deliver a frictionless shopping experience
- Innovation Foundry to be set up in Kuala Lumpur to advance agentic commerce solutions and upskill AEON employees
AEON360 and Google Cloud today announced a multi-year collaboration to deliver a “continuous commerce” experience across AEON’s retail, finance, and lifestyle ecosystem. This initiative is the cornerstone of AEON360’s broader agentic commerce roadmap with Google Cloud in Southeast Asia, designed to make every customer interaction—from product discovery, to post-purchase delivery and support—intuitively adapted to the shopper’s intent in real-time.
“Our ambition is to create an ecosystem that serves consumers as a cohesive, intelligent entity, so every engagement feels crafted just for them, no matter where they begin their shopping journey,” said Daisuke Maeda, Chairman, AEON360. “With Google Cloud, we’re shifting from simple digital interactions to AI agents that surface the most relevant offerings and perform complex tasks on our customers’ behalf, starting in Malaysia, with a roadmap to expand across key Southeast Asian markets that we’re present in. Through our Innovation Foundry, we’re upskilling our staff to be the architects of this agentic commerce future, anchored on a data foundation that adapts to evolving preferences, predicated on customer consent.”
The next phase of implementation will be led by Low Ngai Yuen, Managing Director, AEON360 and Glen Cha, Chief Technology Officer, AEON360, translating the collaboration agreement into tangible customer experiences.
A unified data foundation for contextual intelligence
Central to the collaboration is a contextual intelligence engine that moves beyond traditional personalization to understand a customer’s unique preferences and needs across their AEON journey.
In practice, a shopper searching for family dinner ingredients in Kuala Lumpur will no longer need to re-establish their identity or preferences across different AEON services. Instead, the system accounts for their specific grocery purchasing habits and past interactions to surface curated product recommendations, member pricing, and real-time stock availability on myAEON2go or at the nearest AEON MaxValu store. Across the shopping journey, it dynamically integrates bespoke financing and reward options (e.g., installment plans, cashback, or AEON points), delivering optimal value from the moment of discovery through to a seamless checkout.
To power this engine, AEON360 is using BigQuery, Google Cloud’s data platform, to build an enterprise knowledge graph that reconciles customer data across AEON entities and touchpoints. The implementation of this unified data foundation is a critical step in AEON360’s deployment of AI agents.
An innovation foundry to drive AI fluency and agent orchestration
To ensure AEON employees are AI fluent, Google Cloud will help establish the AEON360 Innovation Foundry in Kuala Lumpur. This center will equip employees across AEON’s lines of business with Google skills and certifications. It will also provide a dedicated environment for teams to create and scale agentic AI solutions that enhance customer engagement and unlock new revenue opportunities throughout AEON’s ecosystem of merchants, tenants, and suppliers.
The Foundry will utilize Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience (CX) to deploy pre-built and configurable agents that integrate shopping and customer service. The shopping agent acts as a proactive digital concierge, processing text, voice, and images to autonomously build carts and execute consented actions. Simultaneously, a customer experience agent enables 24/7 inquiry resolution while providing human representatives with real-time guidance. These agents will be grounded in AEON360’s unified data foundation, making them context-aware and capable of executing multi-step actions on behalf of customers.
Extending agentic commerce through open standards
AEON360 plans to extend agentic commerce beyond its owned digital properties by adopting the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). Pioneered by Google, this open standard allows AI agents and retail systems to operate in tandem across different consumer surfaces, businesses, and payment providers. This could facilitate the future introduction of a business agent via Google Merchant Center, for shoppers to chat directly with AEON brands on Google Search. This agent acts as a virtual sales associate that answers product questions in the brand’s voice and connects with users during key shopping moments. Natively within Google Search, AEON360 will then be able to present contextually relevant incentives—such as exclusive discounts—to shoppers who are ready to complete a purchase.
These capabilities will likewise be grounded in AEON360’s unified data foundation. This ensures that when a shopper turns to Google Search for product discovery, the experience remains an accurate and authorized extension of the AEON ecosystem. In addition, AEON360 is exploring new integrations with Google Pay that allow shoppers to authorize agent-led transactions across touchpoints, with their payment methods and shipping information securely stored in Google Wallet.
“For too long, traditional retail technologies have created fragmented experiences where shoppers are forced to restart their journeys at every turn,” said Hana Raja, Country Manager, Malaysia, Google Cloud. “AEON360 is changing this by using Google Cloud’s full-stack AI to turn toilsome browsing into a frictionless experience. Our collaboration will deliver agentic commerce solutions grounded in a ‘continuous thread’ of context—ensuring that information flows with the shopper to help AEON360 anticipate and act on what they need next.”
