By Hamza Faisal
Walmart is flinging its doors open to the AI shopping agent era, just as its biggest rival is trying to bolt them shut. The retail giant on Wednesday announced a trio of tools that let AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Meta's Muse shop and buy on customers' behalf, with spending limits and approvals baked in from day one.
The move draws a sharp line through the industry: while Amazon has started blocking outside AI agents from completing purchases on its platform, Walmart is betting that customers would rather hand their grocery lists and gadget hunts to a chatbot than do the clicking themselves.
Agent Gateway, Agent Profiles and a rulebook
The rollout has three parts. The centerpiece is the Walmart Agent Gateway, a new server built on Anthropic's open Model Context Protocol that gives approved agents a direct, fast way to search products and complete checkouts, instead of scraping the site through a web browser. It launches in beta for companies and developers.
Crucially, the Gateway lets an agent shop for a customer's usual purchases without ever seeing their personal information or purchase history. Agents are barred from touching payment-card data, and any agent that breaks the rules gets blocked from the site entirely.
Second are Agent Profiles, arriving next month: a dedicated profile inside a Walmart account for each AI agent a shopper uses. Customers see exactly what the agent bought separately from their own orders, choose whether every transaction needs approval or gets a spending limit, and can revoke an agent's access at any time. It works for any Walmart account holder, with no Walmart+ membership required.
Amazon's shutout vs Walmart's welcome mat
The timing is no accident. Amazon recently began blocking third-party AI agents from buying on its behalf for customers, shortly after Meta's personal agent Muse launched in September. Travel and booking sites have taken a similar hard line. Walmart, by contrast, already integrates with Muse, ChatGPT and Gemini, and runs its own shopping assistant, Sparky.
"Shopping with an agent won't be for everyone, and it doesn't have to be," Walmart said in its Wednesday press release. "But for customers who choose to use one, our goal is to make our experience the most trusted by building clear controls and protections into the experience from the start."
The company also published terms for AI agents: they must not act beyond what the customer intended, cannot add or change payment methods, and can only access the information needed for the task that the customer allowed.
Why retailers are racing toward agentic checkout
The push comes as banks warn that letting AI agents shop online carries real risks: scams, fraud and data-privacy breaches are all on the list. Walmart's answer is to make the controls the product, an approach that analysts say could set the template for the whole industry.
"The momentum and buy-in from top management teams seems to be making this into a real thing," Mizuho analyst David Bellinger wrote in a note after the announcement, adding that the new tools instilled confidence in the "experimental" shopping process of agentic purchases.
CEO John Furner laid out the vision at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco: a future where AI agents shop at scale, across both Walmart and Sam's Club. If the Gateway takes off, the question won't be whether bots buy our groceries, but which retailer convinced us first to let them.
By Hamza Faisal
