Walmart opens its platform to AI shopping agents as Amazon shuts them out

Walmart said Wednesday it is building its platform around AI shopping agents, just as its biggest rival, Amazon, moves to keep those same agents out. The retailer unveiled an Agent Gateway and a set of controls meant to let AI agents shop for customers while giving those customers a way to track and limit what the agents do.

The centerpiece is Walmart’s new Agent Gateway, a server built on the model context protocol, or MCP, a standard originally created by Anthropic that lets AI agents connect to outside tools and data. Through it, an approved agent can search Walmart’s online inventory and complete a purchase for the person using it. Walmart says the gateway will also let customers shop for familiar brands or past purchases without handing their personal information or purchase history directly to the agent. The system covers both Walmart and its warehouse chain, Sam’s Club.

Spending limits and oversight

Alongside the gateway, Walmart is introducing Agent Profiles starting next month. Each AI agent a customer uses gets its own profile tied to their account, so agent purchases show up separately from the customer’s own. Shoppers can require approval for every transaction or set a spending limit the agent can act within on its own. Walmart compares the setup to adding an authorized user to a credit card, where that person’s charges are tracked and capped. A profile is created the first time someone shops through an agent via the gateway, and customers can delete a profile at any time. Walmart says agent support doesn’t require a Walmart+ membership.

The company is also rolling out specific terms for how agents can operate on its site. Agents cannot take actions beyond what the shopper asked for, cannot access the customer’s payment information, and can only pull the information needed for the task at hand. Walmart says agents that don’t follow those terms will be blocked from its site. Notably, the company’s regular returns process applies even when an agent buys something the customer didn’t want, a condition aimed at easing concerns about early use of agentic shopping.

Walmart’s approach puts it at odds with much of the rest of online retail. Amazon recently began blocking AI agents from completing purchases on behalf of shoppers, and various travel and booking sites have taken a similar path, locking agents out of their systems entirely. Walmart, by contrast, had already partnered with Meta’s shopping agent, Muse, and offers integrations with ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI apps. Walmart president and CEO John Furner said at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco that the new tools are meant to prepare the company for a point when AI agents become a mainstream way to shop, according to the company.

What happens next depends on how many shoppers actually hand purchasing decisions to an agent, and whether Walmart’s spending limits and returns guarantee hold up once agents are buying at scale. Amazon’s and Walmart’s opposite bets on agent access make the next few months a test of which approach shoppers and regulators trust more.