Direct answer: Walmart has launched an Agent Gateway — a dedicated channel for AI shopping agents to search its inventory and buy on customers’ behalf — while rival Amazon is blocking AI agents from making purchases. The two giants have just placed opposite bets on the future of shopping.
What happened
Walmart announced the move on Wednesday at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, where president and CEO John Furner laid out the retailer’s agentic-commerce push, TechCrunch reported. At the core is the Agent Gateway, an MCP server (built on Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol) that lets approved AI agents connect to Walmart, search its online inventory and complete purchases for the shopper.
Walmart already had partnerships with leading agents — Meta’s Muse — plus integrations with ChatGPT, Gemini and others; the Gateway formalises and scales that access, covering both Walmart and Sam’s Club.
The controls are the interesting part. Walmart says the Gateway lets customers shop their usual brands without sharing personal information or purchase history directly with the agent. Next month, “Agent Profiles” roll out: each AI agent you use gets its own authorised profile in your Walmart account, so you can see its purchases separately from yours, require approval for each transaction, or set spending limits — “similar to adding someone as an authorised user on your credit card.” You can delete a profile at any time. No Walmart+ membership is needed.
This lands right after Amazon — Walmart’s biggest competitor — began blocking AI agents from buying on shoppers’ behalf, a position shared by several travel and booking sites that have locked agents out entirely.
What it means for UK small businesses
Whether you’re in the US or selling into it from the UK, this split is a preview of what’s coming to British retail:
- The agent channel is open somewhere — optimise for it. When an AI agent shops, it reads structured data: price, stock, delivery time, returns. If your product listings are messy, the agent picks the cleaner competitor. Audit your feeds now.
- Two playbooks, one lesson. Walmart is courting agents; Amazon is blocking them. Both are betting billions on being right. For small retailers, the pragmatic move is neutrality: don’t block agents (you can’t afford to lose a channel), but keep human-friendly checkout excellent too.
- Watch the control features. Agent Profiles — per-agent authorisation, spending caps, deletable access — are the template for consumer trust in agentic commerce. Any business building an AI buying feature should copy this pattern: visible, revocable, capped.
Related reading: the agentic commerce boom and how AI agents are already reshaping UK small business workflows — plus the cloud infrastructure being built for agents.
Honest limits / what to watch
- “Approved agents” is a gate. Walmart decides which agents get in. A small AI startup’s shopping assistant may not be approved — this is openness on Walmart’s terms, not an open protocol for everyone.
- Fraud and disputes are untested. When an agent buys the wrong thing with your money, who eats the cost — you, the agent provider, or Walmart? The returns machinery for agent-made purchases hasn’t been stress-tested at scale.
- Amazon’s bet might be the safer one (for Amazon). Blocking agents protects Amazon’s ad business and its control over the customer relationship. If agents turn out to be a thin margin-shaving layer, Amazon will look wise. The jury is out.
FAQs
What is Walmart’s Agent Gateway?
It is Walmart’s new MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets approved AI agents search Walmart’s online inventory and make purchases on behalf of shoppers — the first large-scale gateway built by a major retailer for agentic commerce.
Why is Walmart doing this while Amazon blocks AI agents?
Walmart is betting that AI agents become a mainstream shopping channel and wants to be the easiest retailer for them to buy from. Amazon has chosen the opposite approach, blocking agents from making purchases — a split that could reshape where agent-driven spending goes.
Which AI assistants can shop at Walmart?
Walmart has partnerships with Meta’s Muse and integrations with ChatGPT, Gemini and others; the Agent Gateway lets any approved agent connect over the Model Context Protocol.
What are Agent Profiles?
Rolling out next month, Agent Profiles let Walmart customers authorize each AI agent with a dedicated profile in their account — showing the agent’s purchases separately and letting shoppers require per-transaction approval or set spending limits, much like an authorized user on a credit card.
Does Walmart share my data with the AI agent?
Walmart says the Gateway lets customers shop their usual brands without handing personal information or purchase history directly to the agent, and shoppers can delete an Agent Profile at any time.
Do I need Walmart+ to use agentic shopping?
No. Agent support is available to anyone with a Walmart account; a Walmart+ membership is not required.
