Walmart opens a beta connection for AI agents to shop on behalf of its customers
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
Walmart lets AI agents shop for customers on its site and at Sam's Club through Agent Gateway, which is starting out in beta, aimed at businesses and developers. With Agent Profiles, due next month, each agent will get its own profile in the account, with a spending limit or approval of every order. Agents that ignore its rules will be shut out.
On Wednesday, October 21, Walmart presented a set of tools that let AI agents shop on its website and on Sam's Club's on behalf of customers, with permissions and controls set by the customers themselves. Its president and chief executive, John Furner, announced it at the Masters of Scale summit in San Francisco, according to TechCrunch.
Until now, when a customer used an agent, it signed in with the customer's own account, and its purchases were mixed in with the person's without any way to tell them apart. Agents also shop through the browser, following steps meant for people, which the company says is slow, prone to errors and sometimes leaves them stuck. Walmart already had conversational shopping tie-ins with Muse, ChatGPT and Gemini, among others.
The first piece is Walmart Agent Gateway, an MCP server (the protocol, first developed by Anthropic, that agents use to plug into outside data and tools) through which approved agents can search the online catalogue and buy more quickly and reliably. It begins with a beta for businesses and developers. Walmart says the system will help an agent find the products a customer usually buys without handing over their purchase history or personal data.
The second, Agent Profiles, will arrive next month. The first time an agent is used through the Gateway, a profile is created for it inside the customer's account, which the customer links by signing in to Walmart. From there, they will be able to see what each agent buys separately, require their approval for every order or give it a spending limit (the company offers $50, $100 or $200 as examples) and delete the profile whenever they want. Walmart compares it to adding someone as an extra cardholder on a credit card. According to TechCrunch and a Reuters report published by KSL, it will be open to anyone with a Walmart account, with no need for a Walmart+ subscription.
Walmart is also publishing rules for agents. By default, the customer has to approve purchases, and the company may ask for further approvals even within the limit. Agents may not go beyond what the shopper wants, do not receive card details and cannot add or change payment methods, and they only get the information they need for the task. Returns work as usual, including when the agent does not do what it was supposed to. The prices an agent sees are the same ones a person would see on Walmart.com, and agents that break the rules will be blocked.
The announcement comes shortly after Amazon, its main competitor, began stopping AI agents from buying on behalf of users, according to TechCrunch; Reuters describes Amazon as trying to restrict how much access outside shopping agents have to its site. Walmart has not given an exact date for Agent Profiles or said when the Gateway will leave beta.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
Big retailers have to decide what to do with the AI agents that arrive to shop on people's behalf, and there are already two opposite answers: Amazon is blocking their way and Walmart is opening its own entrance for them, with rules. Walmart's bet is to keep the relationship with the customer even when a machine does the buying: the profile, the limits and the returns stay in its hands, and the agent sees only what it strictly needs. For this to move from beta to everyday use, two things are missing: agent makers adapting to its rules and customers trusting it enough to hand over their shopping. Anyone who sells online should watch closely how this plays out: if agents become a sales channel, shops that agents cannot read will be left out of that shop window.
Official source: Walmart · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
