Wayvia's Big Bet: Human Experts to Steer AI-Driven Commerce

IRVINE, Calif. – July 15, 2026 – In a strategic pivot that speaks volumes about the future of retail, omnicommerce leader Wayvia today announced it is moving beyond pure-play technology by launching a full-fledged Professional Services division. The move, which pairs its powerful AI-driven platform with seasoned human expertise, is a direct acknowledgment of a growing crisis in the C-suite: brands are drowning in data but starved for actionable strategy.

Formerly known as PriceSpider until its 2025 rebrand, the company is betting that the next frontier isn’t just better AI, but better-guided AI. The new division aims to bridge the critical gap between insight and execution, offering what the company calls a “human-in-the-loop” model to help its 2,000+ brand clients navigate an increasingly complex digital shelf. The expansion is being supercharged by the appointment of two heavy-hitting industry veterans: former Walmart executive Robert Gregory and former Bazaarvoice VP Lynne Riojas.

“Our clients’ time is their scarcest resource, and Professional Services is how we help them make the most of it,” said Anthony Ferry, co-founder and CEO of Wayvia. “It’s a true human-in-the-loop model, where AI surfaces what matters and our team brings the judgment and execution to make it count.”

The Human-in-the-Loop Imperative

For years, the promise of tech platforms has been one of empowerment through automation and data. Yet, many brand managers find themselves armed with sophisticated dashboards but lacking the bandwidth or specialized knowledge to translate that intelligence into tangible growth. Wayvia’s move is a tacit admission that software alone isn't the complete answer, especially as AI-driven “agentic commerce”—where algorithms make purchasing decisions—begins to take hold.

The new division is designed to function as an extension of a client’s own team. It leverages Wayvia’s proprietary AI, including its recently launched Model Context Protocol (MCP), to identify trends, surface opportunities, and flag potential issues across a brand's entire retail ecosystem. But instead of leaving clients to interpret these signals, a dedicated team of human experts steps in to craft and execute bespoke strategies. This could mean optimizing product content for AI discovery, adjusting media spend based on real-time competitor data, or troubleshooting a product listing on a key retail site.

Leading this charge is Robert Gregory, the new Senior Director of Professional Services, whose career has been forged at the intersection of retail operations and tech implementation. “I’m thrilled to join Wayvia and build something the industry hasn’t seen before,” Gregory said. “We give our engagement managers AI that surfaces insights, tracks trends and recommends action, and then our experts turn that intelligence into execution and a bespoke experience for every client. It’s a true white-glove model.” His vision directly counters the one-size-fits-all approach of many automated solutions, promising a tailored service layer on top of a powerful tech stack.

From PriceSpider to Platform Powerhouse

To understand the significance of this launch, one must look at Wayvia’s deliberate transformation. The company began its life as PriceSpider, a name synonymous with price tracking and where-to-buy widgets. Its rebrand in July 2025 signaled a much broader ambition: to become an end-to-end omnicommerce enablement platform. Since then, the company has aggressively built out its technological capabilities, leveraging nearly two decades of shopper and retail intelligence.

The foundation of this evolution is its AI-native architecture. The company has rolled out next-generation versions of its Shoppable media platform and its Prowl retail intelligence tool. Most critically, it launched the industry’s first AI-native omnicommerce Model Context Protocol, an infrastructure designed to provide natural language access to live market data. This isn't just about creating prettier dashboards; it's about building a system that can interact with and inform the AI agents that are increasingly mediating the path to purchase.

Viewed in this context, the Professional Services division isn't just an add-on; it's the logical capstone to this technological build-out. By creating a powerful intelligence engine, Wayvia also created a need for expert pilots. The new division ensures that the sophisticated insights generated by its platform don't get lost in translation, making the company a more indispensable partner from the first click to the final sale.

The Talent Coup: Assembling a Veteran Leadership Team

A strategy is only as strong as the people chosen to execute it, and here Wayvia has made two exceptionally strategic hires. The recruitment of Robert Gregory and Lynne Riojas sends a clear signal about the company's intent to dominate the service layer of retail tech.

Gregory’s experience is a perfect microcosm of the problem Wayvia aims to solve. Having overseen site merchandising at Walmart.com, he has firsthand knowledge of the operational complexities of a massive digital retail environment. His subsequent roles at commerce software providers Salsify and PartnerLinQ involved onboarding thousands of manufacturers, giving him deep empathy for the brand-side challenges of data syndication and channel management. He isn't just a tech services leader; he's a retail operator who understands the 'why' behind the 'what'.

Joining him is Lynne Riojas as the new Head of Sales, a proven revenue leader tasked with commercializing this new vision. Riojas’s career is marked by a decade at Bazaarvoice, where she scaled the company’s enterprise sales organization during a period of explosive growth in user-generated content and social commerce. Her more recent role at influencer platform Captiv8 places her at the forefront of modern marketing. Her background demonstrates a keen understanding of how brand narratives are built and monetized in a distributed digital world.

“What drew me to Wayvia is that the company is solving a real problem for brands at exactly the moment AI is rewriting how shoppers buy,” Riojas stated. Her job, as she sees it, is to build a sales team focused on partnership, one that can articulate the value of this hybrid human-AI approach to a market hungry for solutions.

By adding a services division, Wayvia is evolving from a software provider into a strategic partner, competing not only with other PXM and data platforms like Salsify but also with the territory of specialized e-commerce consultancies. This integrated model—proprietary AI platform plus expert execution—could set a new benchmark for what brands expect from their technology partners, forcing the rest of the industry to re-evaluate whether providing the tools is enough in a world that increasingly demands the solution.