Ecommerce entered 2026 with momentum behind online resale growth, and some of the biggest names in the space — along with young startups — are trying to capitalize on that interest with artificial intelligence (AI).
In Seattle, venture-backed Gone.com is using AI for pricing. Elsewhere, the startup Phia, which is barely a year old, is explicitly marketing itself as an AI-powered platform for improving secondhand buying and selling experiences. And the web browser extension Beni is also using AI in the space to aid discovery in re-commerce.
In March, the resale platform ThredUp released new findings about the demand and preferences that it sees among shoppers. It found that 66% were comfortable allowing AI to manage their resale activities, choosing what to sell and evaluating markets for buyers.
Dan DeMeyere, the chief product and technology officer at ThredUp, sees an appetite among consumers for agentic AI. That technology is used to automate and perform some resale-associated tasks.
How is AI being used in online resale?
“Agentic technology is fundamentally reshaping ecommerce, shifting consumers from browsing and filtering to AI-driven discovery, negotiation, and trust in secondhand,” DeMeyere said in ThredUp’s March report.
In the report, ThredUp identified speed, ease and automation as “key” to resale’s next phase of growth online.
For example, the report’s authors noted that 36% of consumers indicated they would resell more frequently under one condition. They want payout processes to be faster. Overall, ThredUp’s research showed that 32% of consumers were open to resale if it were convenient enough with minimal effort to set up listings. That’s where it sees what it calls “the largest opportunity for AI-driven automation.”
The RealReal’s investment in AI
Rati Levesque, the president and CEO at The RealReal, spoke at length about AI during the online marketplace’s February earnings call.
“To date, we’ve received 12 patents formally recognizing our innovations in luxury resale and positioning us to capitalize on AI as an enablement tool in authentication and pricing,” Levesque stated.
The RealReal uses Athena, its AI tool for intake processes, to speed up experiences.
“Athena is designed to optimize the blend of human expertise and technology,” Levesque said. “By automating the repetitive data-driven tasks, we are reducing costs and increasing speed to site.”
In addition, she shared that The RealReal leverages AI for sales as well.
“Last year, we rolled out Smart Sales, our AI-enabled tool that automates lead scoring, ensuring our sales team is mobilized towards the highest value supply opportunities,” she noted. “In Q4, we launched a new tool for our sales team, which leverages our vast data and AI-led pricing algorithms to provide real-time valuation estimates.”
Planning ahead in 2026
And, like ThredUp, The RealReal has baked expanding use of AI into its plans for the year ahead.
“As we look out through 2026, we will expand these capabilities further, starting with AI recommendations in the near term, followed by visual and agentic conversational search to further create a hyper-personalized high-end shopping experience,” Levesque stated.
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