The 2025 holiday season has gone down in history as the first truly “AI-driven” shopping period. Global retail sales exceeded 1 trillion dollars in the United States alone, and artificial intelligence systems influenced 263 billion dollars worth of transactions - one in five orders involved algorithms in some way. Traffic from AI chatbots to retailer websites grew by 760% year on year, fundamentally changing the way consumers discover and purchase products. In Poland, the e-commerce market reached a value of over 130 billion PLN, with InPost now processing more than 90% of domestic online orders through its network of 26,500 parcel lockers.
This transformation was not limited to sales. Logistics companies processed 2.3 billion parcels in North America using machine-learning-based route optimisation systems. Amazon’s warehouses are now operated by more than one million robots, and drone deliveries in some locations take less than an hour. At the same time, the season exposed weaknesses - a six-hour Shopify outage on Cyber Monday affected thousands of merchants, and cyberattacks leveraging generative AI increased by 520%.
Christmas logistics entered an era of autonomous decision-making
The world’s largest logistics companies deployed AI systems in the 2025 season that go far beyond simple route optimisation. DHL uses Wise Systems software for dynamic delivery planning, integrating real-time data on traffic congestion, weather and road conditions. The result is a 20% reduction in delivery time and significant fuel savings. DHL’s predictive models achieve 90-95% accuracy in forecasting parcel volumes for specific facilities, allowing precise allocation of workforce resources.
The ORION system used by UPS is one of the most advanced examples of AI in logistics - it processes billions of data points daily and independently makes routing decisions. The result: 100 million fewer miles driven annually, 300 million dollars in savings, and a reduction of CO2 emissions by 100,000 tonnes. In 2025, UPS equipped 100,000 vehicles with RFID technology, creating a “parcel with a brain” - each shipment is tracked in real time by a network of sensors.
FedEx placed its bets on sorting robots. DoraSorter - an intelligent robot deployed at a sorting centre in southern China - handles parcels up to 10 kg and routes them to 100 different destinations. The Roxo robot for autonomous last-mile deliveries has received approval to operate in more than 12 US states. A FedEx survey from November 2025 found that 97% of large US retailers planned to use AI during the holiday season - for chatbots, ad targeting, inventory management and price optimisation.
“What we are observing in Christmas logistics is a shift from reactive crisis management to predictive orchestration of the entire supply chain,” comments Michal Korzen, CTO at SNOK. “AI systems not only optimise routes, but predict bottlenecks a week before they occur and autonomously redirect resources.”
Amazon’s million robots are transforming warehouses
Amazon reached a turning point - in June 2025, the number of robots across its global network exceeded one million units. The Sequoia system identifies and stores goods 75% faster than previous solutions, cutting order fulfilment time by 25%. The new Blue Jay robot, being trialled in South Carolina, combines picking, sorting and consolidation functions in a single workstation, handling around 75% of the product assortment.
Particularly notable is Project Eluna - an AI agent managing robots and warehouse teams, delivering real-time operational intelligence. Amazon is also testing the humanoid robot Digit from Agility Robotics, capable of performing tasks requiring human-like dexterity. Despite this automation, the company hired 250,000 seasonal workers - the same number as in the two previous years - showing that technology complements rather than replaces people in the short term.
The Polish logistics market accelerates its transformation
InPost retained its position as market leader with approximately 70% share of the Polish parcel locker market. The network grew to 26,500 machines in Poland and 88,600 pick-up points across Europe. The company uses AI to forecast demand, optimise courier routes and manage resources in real time. In December 2025, Rafał Brzoska announced the launch of an AI-driven e-commerce platform from 1 January 2026, offering personalised recommendations based on purchase history.
An innovative step by InPost is its investment in Bloq.it and NEXT technology - battery-powered parcel lockers that operate for up to a year without charging, enabling installation in remote locations without access to the electricity grid. In the United Kingdom, parcel lockers with facial recognition are being trialled for faster and more secure collection.
InPost has also added something you might not expect from a courier company: a chatbot based on the Polish language model Bielik has appeared in the InPost Mobile app, as part of the “Feed the Bielik” (“Nakarm Bielika”) initiative run with the SpeakLeash Foundation. In practice, this is a visible shortcut on the home screen (a banner) that leads to a conversation “like ChatGPT”, with each use simultaneously contributing data to further fine-tune the model for the Polish linguistic and cultural context. Interestingly, the integration is also said to include a variant of Bielik with real-time internet access, with the feature to be rolled out gradually following an app update - at a scale of around 15 million users in Poland, this sounds like a very large “testing ground” for the development of home-grown AI.
Poczta Polska (the Polish Post) is carrying out an ambitious transformation programme worth approximately 500 million PLN. By 2028, a minimum of 18 letter sorters will be installed across six main operational centres (Warsaw, Zabrze, Komorniki, Lisi Ogon, Wrocław, Pruszcz Gdański). OCR technology will provide 100% registration of items, and intelligent sorters will prepare mail down to the level of the delivery route - even taking into account the order of houses along a postal worker’s round. Projected savings: 100 million PLN annually.
Holiday e-commerce under the dictates of recommendation algorithms
Cyber Monday 2025 went down in history as the largest online shopping day ever - Americans spent 14.25 billion dollars, 7.1% more than the previous year. Black Friday generated 11.8 billion dollars in online sales (+9.1% year on year), with 54.5% of transactions originating from mobile devices. For the entire holiday season (November-December), the NRF forecast sales of 1.01-1.02 trillion dollars - the first time the trillion-dollar mark had ever been exceeded.
A pivotal change was the role of AI assistants in the purchasing process. Amazon Rufus - a generative shopping assistant - served more than 250 million customers, and users engaging with it were 60% more likely to make a purchase. On Black Friday, sessions involving Rufus generated 100% higher sales compared to sessions without AI. Morgan Stanley estimates that by 2030, AI agents will add 115 billion dollars to US e-commerce.
Walmart deployed its Sparky assistant for event planning and personalised product recommendations. Generative AI creates automatic audio summaries for more than a thousand cosmetics products. Dynamic delivery windows are calculated in real time to the minute - with some deliveries completed in under 30 minutes. AI tools reduced customer service waiting times by 70%.
“We are seeing a fundamental shift in the relationship between brands and consumers,” notes Kacper Wojciechowski, Team Leader, Custom Development & AI at SNOK. “Customers no longer browse catalogues - they hold a dialogue with an AI assistant that knows their preferences, budget and purchase history. This requires an entirely new approach to the architecture of sales systems.”
Personalisation is driving conversion
Traffic to e-commerce sites driven by AI chatbots (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini) grew by 760% year on year in the period from 1 November to 1 December. According to Adobe, shoppers arriving from AI sources are 10% more engaged, spend 32% more time on the site, and have a 27% lower bounce rate. Salesforce calculated that AI and agents influenced 67 billion dollars of global sales during Cyber Week - 20% of all orders.
A Talkdesk survey found that 75% of consumers used AI to find deals during the 2025 season (up from 66% in 2024). Among 18-24 year-olds, this figure reached 84%. At the same time, 85% of retailers use predictive analytics to forecast demand, and stores using AI chatbots recorded a 9% increase in conversion.
In Poland, interest in AI tools for shopping is also growing - 53% of Polish e-consumers report using AI tools while shopping, with 19% doing so regularly. Nevertheless, Poles still prefer human contact: 31% choose e-mail, 26% telephone, and only 8% a chatbot.
Technology vendors delivered an arsenal of AI tools
NVIDIA builds digital twins of warehouses
At CES 2025, NVIDIA presented the Mega Omniverse Blueprint - a framework for developing, testing and optimising physical AI and robot fleets in virtual environments. It enables the simulation of warehouses with realistic physics and the testing of “increased holiday demand” scenarios before real-world deployment. KION Group became the first supply chain company to adopt Mega to optimise operations for retail, FMCG and courier services.
NVIDIA’s partnership with Palantir (October 2025) combined CUDA-X accelerated computing with Nemotron models for operational AI in supply chains. Lowe’s became the first retailer to deploy this platform at scale, building a digital twin of its global logistics network to optimise routes in real time, allocate inventory and manage supplier performance.
UiPath automates back-office operations at the peak of the season
UiPath introduced its Maestro platform in April 2025 - an orchestration layer connecting AI agents, robots and human employees. The acquisition of Peak AI (March 2025) enriched the offering with solutions for optimising inventory, pricing and retail promotions. A case study from a US wholesaler shows automation of 200-700 invoices daily with 95% accuracy, reducing processing time from 5 minutes to 30 seconds per invoice.
Lotte e-Commerce in Korea uses UiPath robots with Google OCR to automatically process more than 350 products daily (compared with 200 previously handled by people), verifying descriptions for compliance. TIME Magazine named the UiPath platform one of the Best Inventions of 2025.
“At SNOK, we have been deploying UiPath solutions at clients in the retail and logistics sectors for years, but this year’s holiday season showed a scale we had not seen before,” says Michał Korzeń. “Automation of invoicing processes, complaint handling and order verification allowed our clients to handle up to 40% more transactions without a proportional increase in headcount.”
SAP and Microsoft integrate AI with ERP systems
SAP presented a version of S/4HANA Cloud for retail at NRF 2025, with processes specific to merchandising and store operations. The Joule AI assistant speeds up information retrieval by 50% and is integrated with procurement and supplier management modules. For the fourth quarter of 2025, Joule agents were announced - including a Shopfloor Supervisor Agent for managing production disruptions.
Microsoft expanded Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management with Copilot features - the system proactively flags external threats (weather, geopolitical events) affecting the supply chain and enables natural language queries (“Find all 18-inch tyres in my warehouse”). The new Supplier Communications Agent monitors emails and identifies required changes to orders. A case study from SPAR Austria shows demand forecast accuracy of over 90% and a 15% reduction in costs through minimising waste.
Lenovo delivers edge infrastructure for stores
The ThinkEdge SE100 (launched at MWC25) is the market’s first entry-level server for AI inferencing - 85% smaller than a standard 1U server, with power consumption below 140W even with a GPU. Liquid cooling ensures quiet operation in a retail environment. The Viana platform integrates edge AI for analysing customer traffic, detecting people and optimising operations - with a documented 30% increase in guest satisfaction.
KSeF and Polish regulatory specifics are shaping the season
Poland’s e-commerce market, worth over 130 billion PLN, is preparing for a fundamental change - from 1 February 2026, the National e-Invoice System (KSeF) becomes mandatory for large companies (revenue exceeding 200 million PLN in 2024), and from 1 April 2026 for all VAT payers. This means the 2025 holiday season was the last one without mandatory e-invoicing for the largest players.
The implementation timeline provides for the issuance of certificates from 1 November 2025 (valid for 2 years), a Demo test environment from 15 October 2025, and the KSeF 2.0 application from 15 November 2025. The Ministry of Finance is running free training sessions, “Wednesdays with KSeF” (“Środy z KSeF”), from September to December 2025. Nevertheless, research shows that 30% of companies have not yet started preparations.
“KSeF is not merely a regulatory requirement, but an opportunity for a fundamental overhaul of financial processes,” emphasises Jacek Bugajski, CEO of SNOK. “Companies that treat implementation as a transformation project, rather than merely a compliance adjustment, will gain a competitive edge through automation and better visibility of financial flows.”
Data sovereignty is driving on-premise solutions
For Polish public institutions, the public cloud remains problematic. Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski emphasised in March 2025 that the development of cloud computing within public administration is a key element of digital sovereignty and a cornerstone of state security. Key concerns relate to the US CLOUD Act and Patriot Act, which allow US agencies access to data even when stored in Europe.
The Polska Chmura (Polish Cloud) initiative brings together 11 providers offering services exclusively from data centres located in Poland, with ISO 22301, 27001 and AQAP 2110 certifications. A 2022 study found that 88% of enterprises prefer a cloud provider with a data centre in Poland, with this figure reaching 74% in the GovTech sector. Chmura Krajowa - a joint venture of PFR and PKO BP - provides sovereign infrastructure for public administration.
“Public institutions and companies in critical sectors face a dilemma: how to harness the potential of AI without compromising data sovereignty,” explains Michał Korzeń. “The solution lies in hybrid architectures and edge computing - processing sensitive data locally, using cloud computing power only where it is safe to do so. Lenovo ThinkEdge servers fit this model perfectly.”
Black Friday, Polish style
In Poland, 66.5% of adults planned to shop during Black Friday 2025 (+2.4 percentage points year on year), with average spending of 700-800 PLN. A record 20 million BLIK transactions during Black Week 2024 illustrates the dominance of mobile payments - 70% of transactions were carried out via mobile devices.
Allegro - with a 45-60% share of Polish e-commerce, 19.19 million monthly users, and GMV of 14.8 billion PLN in Q1 2025 - uses AI for product recommendations, intelligent pricing and automatic improvement of product thumbnails. New “margin-based intelligent ads” increased CTR by 16% year on year.
An interesting trend is the surge in cross-border purchases - 39% of Poles shop online abroad (up from 15% in 2024), mainly on Temu, Shein and TikTok Shop. Recommerce is also growing: 56% buy used products online, and 54% sell them.
The season’s challenges exposed systemic weaknesses
Shopify outage at the most critical moment
Cyber Monday 2025 brought a six-hour Shopify authentication outage - a platform handling more than 10% of all online transactions in the US. At its peak, around 4,000 incidents were reported in the US and 2,500 in the UK. Merchants were cut off from admin panels and POS systems during the busiest shopping hours. Despite the outage, Cyber Monday generated 14.2 billion dollars in sales, but Shopify’s shares fell by 5.9%.
The incident highlighted the risk of dependency on a single platform. Experts recommend redundant payment processors and backup transaction pathways. An earlier AWS outage in October 2025 also affected many e-commerce platforms, demonstrating a concentration of risk within the ecosystem.
“The Shopify outage is a warning for every company relying on a single provider for critical services,” comments Jacek Bugajski. “At SNOK, we have long recommended that clients adopt multi-vendor strategies and conduct regular business continuity tests. The cost of redundancy is a fraction of the potential losses from downtime at the peak of the season.”
Cybercriminals weaponised AI
FortiGuard Labs identified 18,000 malicious domains with Christmas-related themes registered in the three months before the season - with terms such as “Christmas”, “Black Friday” and “gift”. More than 750 were confirmed as malicious. Retail-ISAC reported a 520% increase in attacks using generative AI.
The scale of data compromise is alarming: 1.57 million stolen e-commerce credentials and 311 million hacked accounts on underground platforms, of which 63% belong to retail brands. Actively exploited vulnerabilities include a flaw in Adobe/Magento (CVE-2025-54236) enabling session hijacking - more than 250 Magento stores were compromised.
The average cost of a data breach exceeds 4.4 million dollars according to IBM, and 60% of small companies close within six months of a cyberattack.
“Generative AI is democratising cybercrime - even novice attackers can create convincing phishing messages and websites,” warns Kacper Wojciechowski. “Defence requires equally advanced tools: AI for anomaly detection, automated threat analysis and immediate response. Our partnership with SecurityBridge allows us to protect clients’ SAP systems against these new attack vectors.”
Labour shortages are driving automation
76% of logistics organisations report acute talent shortages extending beyond the holiday season. Labour costs in logistics rose by 40% between 2018 and 2023, and employee turnover is 33% higher than before the pandemic. Deloitte forecasts demand for 3.8 million new manufacturing jobs by 2033, of which half may remain unfilled.
AI offers solutions: Kuehne+Nagel uses AI to allocate resources across 1,300 locations, achieving a 15% reduction in labour costs alongside a 20% increase in volumes. McKinsey estimates that 30-35% of current activities in consumer-facing functions could be automated by 2030. Available automation technologies can already run a typical grocery store with 55-65% fewer labour hours.
Agentic AI is defining the future of commerce
2025 brought mainstream adoption of agentic AI - autonomous AI systems that plan, reason and act with minimal human oversight. Unlike generative AI, which responds to prompts, AI agents carry out tasks based on context and make decisions independently.
Gartner forecasts that by 2028, 15% of everyday business decisions will be made autonomously by AI agents, with agents mediating 15 trillion dollars in B2B spending. By that time, AI agents will outnumber human sales representatives tenfold.
Walmart is building a “super agent” strategy - four integrated AI systems: Sparky for customers, Marty for partners, an agent for store employees, and an agent for developers. Levi Strauss, in cooperation with Microsoft, is building an “enterprise superagent” covering IT, HR and operations. Salesforce Agentforce helped retailers using branded agents achieve 32% faster sales growth during Cyber Week.
At the same time, many organisations remain stuck at the pilot stage - moving from experimentation to production remains a challenge. An IBM/Morning Consult survey shows that 99% of developers building AI applications are exploring or developing agents, but scaling requires fundamental changes to business processes.
“Agentic AI is the next step after RPA automation and generative AI,” summarises Michał Korzeń. “But deploying agents requires solid foundations: clean data, integrated systems and clearly defined processes. At SNOK, we help clients build these foundations before they move to autonomous decision-making systems.”
Conclusions for the Polish market
The 2025 holiday season confirmed that AI and automation have ceased to be an optional add-on - they have become a foundation of competitiveness in commerce and logistics. Polish companies - from InPost with its predictive analytics to Poczta Polska with its half-a-billion-PLN automation programme - are actively investing in these technologies.
The forthcoming mandatory implementation of KSeF will force enterprises to digitise invoicing processes, which could become a catalyst for broader back-office transformation. Data sovereignty requirements for public institutions create space for domestic cloud providers and on-premise solutions - a niche that Lenovo, with its ThinkEdge servers, or Polish members of the Polska Chmura initiative, can effectively occupy.
A key challenge remains the balance between automation and employment. Although Amazon operates a million robots, it still employs a quarter of a million seasonal workers. Companies investing at least 15% of their AI budget in training report 2.8 times higher adoption and 3.5 times higher return on investment. Technology does not replace people - it transforms the nature of their work, requiring new skills and continuous learning.
The 2025 season also revealed the fragile side of digital transformation: the Shopify outage on Cyber Monday, a 520% increase in AI-driven attacks, and 1.57 million stolen credentials are a reminder that cybersecurity must evolve just as quickly as offensive capabilities. For Polish companies, this means the need to invest not only in innovation, but also in system resilience and customer data protection.
“Christmas 2025 was a test of digital maturity for the entire industry,” concludes Jacek Bugajski. “Companies that had already invested in automation, AI and cybersecurity passed this test with distinction. The rest received a clear signal: digital transformation is not a project with an end date, but a continuous process of adapting to a changing technological reality.”
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