How global regulations shape retail tech innovation

I’ve lived and worked across many borders, cultures and regulations. I’m French, I live in San Francisco and I have been investing in retail technology for the past few years. I regularly talk to executives about what’s next, and how to best leverage technology to create a global business that optimizes for consumer experience and convenience. 

One thing all those discussions have in common is navigating regulations. I’m headed to Paris this month for the National Retail Federation’s NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show Europe, featuring the NRF Innovators Showcase, which spotlights the newest technologies transforming commerce for consumers and retailers. Here’s my take on how regulation makes winners and losers, and how that comes to life at the show. Because underneath, it’s the same question: Are we behind because of the rules we’re under? 

How regulation shapes innovation 

Global retail doesn’t run on one rulebook anymore. A European grocer sells to American shoppers, American brands run stores across the EU and both use vendors headquartered elsewhere. 

Companies are building for every regulatory environment whether they mean to or not. Asking whether European regulation helps or hurts innovation is the wrong question. What the rules determine is what kind — which problems look worth solving, and which get solved first. GDPR has clearly benefited some categories and slowed others, as has the lighter U.S. approach. Anyone claiming a clean verdict is usually arguing from their own sector. 

Where a fixed rule has paid off is customer data infrastructure: CRM, loyalty, personalization, measurement. These businesses depend on proving where their data came from. Under GDPR, businesses make one architectural decision early, at the data layer, and never relitigate it. Companies elsewhere spent years hedging across a shifting patchwork, building for rules nobody has written yet. That hedging costs money, and it costs the consumer too. 

The companies built for that environment 

Three companies presenting in Paris were built the other way. NeuCurrent, in Bilbao, Spain, runs retention on first-party profiles with no third-party data to unwind later, and reports a 12% lift in repeat purchases. Shoptimus AI, in Barcelona, Spain, builds grocery lists from consented purchase history alone; across Spanish grocer Bon Preu’s full loyalty base, an A/B test measured 8.5% higher monthly sales. Cyreen, in Frankfurt, Germany, took the hardest case with in-store measurement, building sensor-based tracking compliant by design, and is now Germany’s first nationwide retailer-independent in-store media network. 

None of them were inspired by GDPR. They were told unambiguously what to build, settled it once, and got the compounding return on not having to keep their options open. 

A different environment produces different progress. American and Chinese companies built the frontier models, helped by conditions that let them train first and answer questions later. That gave us agentic commerce, and the NRF Innovators Showcase has that side too. 

Alhena AI, from San Francisco, runs a single agent grounded in a retailer’s full catalog — live with Armani and Victoria Beckham, driving a 10% revenue lift — built for a world where discovery is moving into ChatGPT. Alhena didn’t wait for a settled rulebook, and so far, that’s been the right call. But the United States is now assembling a state-by-state patchwork of AI rules that mirrors the privacy one — so the compliance cost may land anyway, just later and without the clarity that would have made it useful. 

When compliance becomes the opportunity 

That cost is also somebody’s market. Complir, in Copenhagen, Denmark, built AI infrastructure for product compliance: Upload a catalog and get back what each market requires for labelling, testing and certification, monitored as rules change. It handles over 100,000 products for retailers including Flying Tiger Copenhagen. That company doesn’t exist in a world with just one rulebook. 

So the question isn’t which government got it right. It’s what and how you specify. Build to the strictest regime you’ll potentially operate under, treat it as a product requirement rather than a legal one and don’t wait for a legislature to hand you the answer. 

That’s what I’ll be looking for in at NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show Europe. The NRF Innovators Showcase puts all of this in one room, and you can see the regulatory map straight off the products. Come find out on the Emerging Tech Tour, or catch pitches on the Innovation Stage. Learn more and register here.

Vincent Diallo is a member of the NRF Innovation Advisory Committee and is founder and general partner, Interlace Ventures.