Walmart opens Agent Gateway beta for AI shopping

Walmart announced the Walmart Agent Gateway on October 21, opening a beta for companies and developers that lets customers search for and buy products at Walmart and Sam's Club through an AI agent of their choice, according to aitimes.com.

The gateway uses MCP, a standard for connecting AI to external tools and data. A second feature, Agent Profile, will be introduced in November and creates a dedicated profile for each AI agent inside a customer's account.

Purchase records are kept separate under that setup, so an agent can find regularly bought items such as milk without seeing the rest of a customer's order history. Customers can require approval for each purchase or let an agent order within a set spending limit, and agent access can be revoked at any time.

Walmart said the features work with a Walmart account and do not require a Walmart+ subscription. Existing return procedures apply if an agent orders something the customer did not intend, agents are barred from accessing card information or changing payment methods, and agents that break the rules are blocked.

Agent access becomes a retail battleground

Walmart has already connected its shopping services with Meta's Muse, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. Until now, agents have ordered products by reading screens and clicking buttons on websites built for people.

The announcement comes as Amazon restricts access for outside shopping agents while investing in its own automation: Alexa for Shopping, which combines Rufus and Alexa+, offers product comparison, cart building and automated repeat purchases. Walmart runs its own shopping AI, Sparky.