Walmart Opens Its Doors to AI Shoppers While Amazon Locks Them Out

Walmart is making a bet its biggest rival won't: that the future of online shopping belongs to AI agents, and customers would rather be given guardrails than a locked door. On Wednesday, the retailer unveiled a new "Agent Gateway" that lets AI shopping assistants browse its inventory and make purchases on a customer's behalf — a direct contrast with Amazon, which recently began blocking AI agents from transacting on its site.

The announcement, made by Walmart president and CEO John Furner at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, positions Walmart as the most agent-friendly major retailer in the U.S. The company already integrates with popular AI assistants including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Meta's Muse, a partnership it announced earlier, according to TechCrunch. The new technology expands that strategy to cover both Walmart and Sam's Club.

A checkout lane for machines

The centerpiece is the Agent Gateway, Walmart's own server built on MCP — the model context protocol originally created by Anthropic. The protocol lets AI agents connect to external tools and data sources; in Walmart's implementation, an approved agent can search the retailer's online inventory and complete purchases for the user who authorized it.

Crucially, Walmart says the Gateway is designed so shoppers don't have to hand their personal information or purchase history to the agent itself. The retailer also built technology to distinguish purchases made by an agent from those the customer initiates directly — an accounting problem that gets messy fast once machines start buying.

Spending limits, per-agent profiles, and returns that apply

Control is the core of the pitch. With "Agent Profiles," rolling out next month, customers will authorize each AI agent they use with a dedicated profile in their Walmart account. That profile lets shoppers view the agent's purchases separately from their own and choose how transactions get approved — either requiring approval for each purchase or authorizing spending within a set limit.

Walmart compares the model to adding an authorized user to a credit card: the agent's transactions are identified and capped. Profiles are created the first time an agent shops through the Gateway, require no Walmart+ membership, and can be deleted at any time.

The retailer is also writing the rules of engagement itself. Special "terms" for AI agents spell out how they must operate on the site — and Walmart says its normal returns process applies even when an agent doesn't act as intended, a deliberate reassurance for customers nervous about being early testers. Agents can't act beyond the shopper's intent, can't access payment information, and can only see what a given task requires. Agents that don't comply get blocked.

The split in retail

The divide between Walmart and Amazon crystallizes an industry argument. Amazon and some travel and booking sites have responded to agentic commerce by locking agents out entirely, according to TechCrunch's reporting. Walmart is going the other way — betting that the company that makes agent shopping feel safe wins the next shift in retail.

Whether shoppers actually want machines buying their groceries is still an open question. But if they do, Walmart intends to be where those machines check out.

Written by the BidAsk Newsroom. Based on reporting from the sources below.