Sharon Gai is an international keynote speaker helping organizations use AI, innovation and agentic commerce to do more with less.
5.00 of 5
Top rated!5 of 5
Sharon’s career experiences have clearly had her involved deeply in a great number of exciting projects as illustrated by her energetic and deeply knowledgeable conversation. I found the information that she shared about China Market Apps to be particularly thorough and insightful.
Gary Burtka
Retail Innovation
Sharon Gai is an international keynote speaker on AI and innovation and a leading authority on agentic commerce. Drawing on executive experience at Alibaba and as General Manager of a billion-dollar ecommerce unicorn, Sharon brings a business-focused perspective to some of the biggest technological shifts shaping organizations today. She is the author of How to Do More with Less, published by Wiley, and Ecommerce Reimagined, published by World Scientific. Her keynotes help organizations understand how AI can enable them to do more with less and navigate the rapidly evolving world of commerce, technology and innovation.
Sharon Gai is an international keynote speaker on AI and innovation and a leading authority on agentic commerce. She brings together experience from the highest levels of global ecommerce with a clear understanding of how artificial intelligence is changing the way organizations operate, innovate and engage with commerce.
At the heart of Sharon Gai’s work is a highly relevant question for organizations today: how can businesses do more with less using AI? Her perspective is grounded in executive experience, global ecommerce and the practical realities organizations face as technology develops at extraordinary speed.
For audiences looking to understand AI beyond the headlines, Sharon brings the conversation into a business context. Her work connects AI, innovation and commerce, giving organizations a perspective shaped by experience inside major technology and ecommerce businesses.
Before becoming an international keynote speaker, Sharon Gai built extensive leadership experience in ecommerce. She served as Head of Global Key Accounts at Tmall, part of Alibaba, giving her first-hand experience with one of the world's most significant ecommerce ecosystems.
She also served as General Manager of a billion-dollar ecommerce unicorn. This executive background gives Sharon a perspective that combines technology and innovation with the realities of building, managing and growing businesses.
Today, Sharon draws on these experiences when speaking to organizations about AI and the changing nature of commerce. Her background enables her to connect emerging technologies with the challenges and opportunities facing companies as they consider how AI can be applied to achieve more with available resources.
Sharon Gai is a leading authority on agentic commerce, an area becoming increasingly important as artificial intelligence changes how commerce works. Her expertise places her at the intersection of AI, innovation and ecommerce, where new technologies are reshaping how organizations approach the future.
Her keynotes help audiences explore what these developments mean from a business perspective. Rather than treating AI as an isolated technology topic, Sharon connects it to the broader transformation taking place across organizations and commerce.
Her central focus on helping organizations do more with less using AI makes her presentations particularly relevant for businesses navigating pressure to innovate while using resources effectively. She brings together her understanding of AI with years of executive experience, creating keynotes informed by both emerging technology and the commercial world.
Book speaker Sharon Gai for topics including:
Sharon Gai is the author of two books examining business, technology and ecommerce. How to Do More with Less, published by Wiley, reflects the central theme of her work with organizations: understanding how AI can help businesses achieve more with the resources available to them.
She is also the author of Ecommerce Reimagined, published by World Scientific. Together, her books reinforce a career focused on understanding how technology is changing commerce and how organizations can respond to transformation.
Her expertise has also been recognized beyond the keynote stage. Sharon has been named a RETHINK Retail Top AI Leader and a LinkedIn Top AI Voice. Her commentary and perspectives have appeared across major international media and technology outlets, including CNN, Bloomberg, Reuters, ABC, CBC and TechCrunch.
Sharon Gai works with organizations operating across industries and markets. Her client experience includes Coca-Cola, Walmart, UBS, Deloitte, Nestlé, Lenovo and LVMH, reflecting the broad relevance of conversations around AI, innovation and commerce.
Her combination of corporate leadership, ecommerce expertise and knowledge of artificial intelligence gives audiences a perspective grounded in both technological change and business experience. Having worked at Alibaba as Head of Global Key Accounts for Tmall and led a billion-dollar ecommerce unicorn as General Manager, she understands transformation from an executive point of view.
For organizations considering what AI means for their business, Sharon brings these different strands together. Her speaking focuses on the opportunities emerging through artificial intelligence, the evolution of ecommerce into agentic commerce, and the challenge facing organizations everywhere: finding smarter ways to innovate and do more with less.
Book Sharon Gai for your event to give audiences an international perspective on AI, innovation and agentic commerce from a speaker, author and former ecommerce executive who has worked at the center of major shifts in technology and business.
5 of 5
Sharon’s career experiences have clearly had her involved deeply in a great number of exciting projects as illustrated by her energetic and deeply knowledgeable conversation. I found the information that she shared about China Market Apps to be particularly thorough and insightful.
Gary Burtka Retail Innovation
5 of 5
One thing I was really impressed with was the clear and inspiring way in which Sharon passed on her knowledge. His talk was full of fascinating practical examples, which made each concept easier to understand and apply in our own professional lives. In addition, Sharon provided an atmosphere of engagement and interaction during her talk. She encouraged the active participation of the audience, answering questions and sharing enriching experiences. It was truly a collaborative learning moment where everyone was able to connect and exchange ideas. I'm sure everyone present at the lecture left with a renewed vision and motivation to apply what they've learned in their careers. Sharon Gai's talk was, without a doubt, an inspiring and transformative experience. I strongly recommend that you attend any lecture or event given by Sharon Gai. Her knowledge and passion for artificial intelligence are contagious and will certainly contribute to everyone's professional growth. Gratitude to Sharon Gai for sharing her expertise and for inspiring us to always strive for the best in ourselves. May more opportunities like this come, because that's how we build a more prosperous and successful work environment.
General Manager Santander
Keynote by Sharon Gai:
As AI systems are able to take on longer and longer tasks that humans were originally hired to do, knowledge workers must adapt to stay relevant. But there is also a missing piece to the puzzle. There are a wealth of things that AI is bad at: being original, critical thinking, having theory of mind and many others. Knowledge workers of today must learn this sharp difference and reorient their skills for this new age.
Sharon Gai, who saw the power of Gen AI in 2018 change her team at Alibaba learned this lesson early. In this energising keynote, Sharon shows how individuals and teams can build the mindset, skills, and habits that keep them relevant and future-ready in an economy shaped by automation and intelligent tools
Takeaways:
Keynote by Sharon Gai:
Consumers are no longer the only ones making purchase decisions; their AI agents are. In the new world of Agentic Commerce, autonomous systems discover, negotiate, and transact for us, reshaping every touchpoint between brand and buyer.
Sharon Gai, a former Alibaba executive and global commerce strategist, takes audiences deep into how agentic technologies are transforming retail as we know it. From product discovery to post-purchase loyalty, she shows how brands must evolve their storytelling, data models, and customer experience to stay visible and relevant when algorithms become the gatekeepers of choice.
Drawing parallels between China’s super-app ecosystems and Western AI-driven platforms, Sharon reveals what the future of shopping looks like and what brands must do now to thrive in it.
Key Takeaways:
Meet Your New Buyer: The AI Agent
Understand how autonomous agents interpret intent, filter products, and make purchase recommendations — often faster and more precisely than humans.
The End of the Funnel as We Know It
See how the buyer journey collapses when agents shop on behalf of users, and how brands can influence decisions in a world without search.
Data as Brand Language
Learn how to translate brand identity into machine-readable metadata so that AI agents “understand” your products, story, and values.
Loyalty in an Algorithmic World
Explore how brand affinity and retention will shift when loyalty is driven by machine logic and contextual personalization.
Practical Playbook for Readiness
Structure product data for agentic visibility.
Build agent-friendly APIs and discoverability layers.
Use AI to co-pilot marketing and merchandising strategies.
Keynote by Sharon Gai:
For two years, leaders have been told to adopt AI agents. Sharon's own "busy bees to beekeepers" framework helped organizations from Walmart to Coca-Cola make that shift. But 2026 has surfaced the harder question: once the agents are live and working around the clock, who is actually engineering how they run?
A new discipline called "loop engineering" is emerging from the world's top AI teams. Instead of prompting one task at a time, they design closed loops, systems that trigger work, let AI iterate and verify itself, and escalate to a human only when judgment or risk demands it. The catch: two teams can build the exact same loop and get completely different results. The loop doesn't know the difference. The people who built it do. In this current, story-driven keynote, Sharon breaks down what loop engineering is, why it's quickly becoming the defining leadership skill of the next two years, and how any organization, not just engineering teams, can design loops that scale trust instead of scaling risk.
Takeaways:
Keynote by Sharon Gai:
Search is no longer just about links and keywords. Increasingly, customers are discovering brands through AI systems that generate answers, recommendations, and summaries on their behalf. If your brand is not structured for how AI reads, understands, and selects information, you may become invisible even if your website still ranks well.
In this session, Sharon Gai introduces Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), explaining how discovery is shifting from search engines to AI assistants. Drawing from real-world examples and her experience working at the intersection of commerce, technology, and AI, she shows how brands can position themselves to be cited, recommended, and trusted by AI systems.
This session reframes digital presence for an AI-first world and helps leaders understand what must change now to stay discoverable tomorrow.
Key Takeaways:
Keynote by Sharon Gai:
AI agents are moving from answering questions to taking actions: searching, drafting, booking, buying, connecting to accounts, and acting on our behalf. That convenience creates a new security reality. The risk is no longer only “What data did I paste into a chatbot?” It is also: What access did I grant? What can the agent do without me? And how would I know if it made the wrong move?
This keynote gives audiences a practical framework for using AI agents with confidence. It covers the personal habits that protect identity, money, private information, and reputation, alongside the enterprise decisions that determine whether agents become a productivity advantage or a new attack surface. The goal is not to slow AI adoption. It is to put the right boundaries around autonomy, keep people accountable for consequential decisions, and build trust before an incident forces the issue.
Takeaways:
Watch Sharon Gai in action
Watch Sharon Gai in action
Watch Sharon Gai in action
