AI Helped Push Black Friday Sales to $11.8 Billion

U.S. shoppers went into this holiday season saying they would spend less. Surveys in early November had people trimming gift lists, cutting overall budgets by around 10%, and bracing for higher prices and a weaker economy.

But when Black Friday was over and the numbers landed, that restraint didn’t show up at checkout. Adobe Analytics puts U.S. online Black Friday spending at $11.8 billion, a record high and roughly 9% more than last year.

What really changed was how that money moved. Adobe says AI-driven traffic to retail sites jumped 805% compared with 2024, and Deloitte estimates about a third of U.S. consumers planned to use generative AI at some point in their holiday shopping,  to compare prices, summarize reviews, or generate gift ideas. Black Friday still broke records, but this time, a lot more of it was steered by software.

Amid those record sales, more than 1,000 Amazon employees were also using the moment to push back, signing an open letter warning that the company’s “warp-speed” AI rollout threatens jobs, democracy, and the climate.

How Black Friday actually felt from the couch

Think about how your own evening probably went.

For a lot of people, Black Friday didn’t look like camping outside a store. It looked like sitting on the couch late in the evening, TV on in the background, phone in hand, trying to squeeze “just a little” shopping in between everything else. The intention was simple: check a few prices, maybe grab one good deal, and get out.

Instead of bouncing between ten tabs, the first move was often to ask for help. One person might tell a chatbot, “I’ve got $80 and need something decent for my sister who loves baking.” Someone else might describe the kind of TV they want in plain language and wait a few seconds for three suggestions to appear, already sorted into “safe pick,” “nicer if you care,” and “cheaper but with trade-offs.” The work of scanning pages, weighing reviews, going through Reddit posts and figuring out what’s junk had already been done before they clicked anything.

That’s where the shift really shows up. Deloitte and Digital Commerce 360 found that among people planning to use AI for holiday shopping this year, over half say they want it to compare prices and find deals, nearly half want it to summarize product reviews, and a big chunk want it to generate shopping lists for them. Instead of you digging through pages of search results, AI is doing the sifting, sorting, and sanity-checking, then handing you a short list that feels “good enough” to click.

You still make the final call. But the path from “I should look for a TV” to “Fine, I’ll buy that one” gets a lot shorter when all the research is tucked into a single question box.

What AI was doing while you “just looked around”

On the surface, you were just scrolling. Underneath, a lot of software was working pretty hard.

Retailers and tech platforms spent the months before Black Friday rolling out AI tools to quietly handle the messy middle of shopping. 

OpenAI added shopping research and guides to ChatGPT that pull from product data and reviews to recommend specific items. Amazon expanded its assistant, Rufus, so it remembers details like your kids’ ages and hobbies and can nudge you toward “the right” board game or Lego set without you re-entering everything each time. 

Google’s AI-powered Mode lets you describe exactly what you want and then surfaces options with side-by-side comparisons on price, reviews, and features. Walmart’s Sparky and Target’s AI Gift Finder are doing very similar behind-the-scenes work inside their own apps. 

All of this strips out friction. A few years ago, you might have bounced between retailers, read a dozen contradictory Reddit threads, and second-guessed yourself into abandoning the cart. This year, a lot of shoppers simply went with the first or second AI-assisted shortlist that felt reasonable. The tech didn’t just answer questions; it quietly shaped which options felt “normal,” “safe,” or “smart.”

Smarter journeys, more expensive finish lines

Here’s the uncomfortable part: “smarter” didn’t necessarily mean “cheaper.”

Adobe says U.S. shoppers spent about $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, a record and roughly a 9% jump from last year. Salesforce, which sits under a big chunk of e-commerce, told Reuters that: it estimates that generative AI and agents influenced about $14.2 billion in global online sales that day, and notes that order volumes dipped while people paid more per item. Its data shows average selling prices up around 7% year over year, while the number of units per transaction slipped. 

Adobe’s broader numbers back that up: plenty of spending, but not because discounts suddenly became incredible—more because baseline prices and fees have crept higher over the year. 

You didn’t need a dashboard to feel it. You’ve watched your grocery total drift up, your streaming bundle inch higher, and your credit card interest bite a little harder each month. So when an assistant tells you, “This $220 air fryer is 30% off its usual price and has a bigger basket and better reviews than the $140 one,” it doesn’t feel like overspending. It feels like finally beating the system, even if, in aggregate, shoppers are paying more per item than they did a year ago.

AI doesn’t swipe your card for you, but it does make it a lot easier to talk yourself into the “slightly nicer” version when the total is chopped into neat, tiny installments.

So yes, the tools helped people find better-fit products with less time and stress. They also helped retailers protect margins in a year when shoppers felt broke but still wanted to show up with something decent under the tree.

What to remember before the next Big sale

The big lesson from this year is that AI in holiday shopping doesn’t feel like a novelty anymore. It’s just part of how the system works.

Deloitte’s long-running survey shows that this is the first season where a solid chunk of everyday shoppers, not just techy early adopters, say they plan to use generative AI to help them shop.  At the same time, others are reporting on a wave of new AI tools from Amazon, Walmart, Google, OpenAI, and Target that go beyond simple recommendations toward always-on price tracking, “buy it when the price drops” automation, and even instant checkout inside chatbots. 

That points to a different kind of Black Friday going forward. Instead of millions of people manually hunting for deals once a year, you’ll have millions of quiet, always-on agents watching your wish lists, your browsing history, and your budget, then tapping you on the shoulder when the system thinks it’s found the right moment to close a sale. Some shoppers will lean into that and feel genuinely helped. Others will look back at their statements and wonder how a “careful” year still turned into record spending.

Either way, this Black Friday will probably be remembered less for the $11.8 billion headline and more for the deeper shift: a holiday where people felt like they finally had smarter tools on their side, and where the software quietlymade sure retailers did, too.