Walmart opens its store to external AI agents with new guardrails

Walmart will let customers create dedicated AI agent profiles inside their accounts within the next month, formalizing how external AI systems can shop on behalf of shoppers, per a Wednesday announcement.

The feature, called "Agent Profiles," gives customers direct control over what agents may do. Shoppers can require approval for each purchase an agent makes, or grant the agent standing permission to buy within a spending limit they set themselves.

The retailer is also building an "Agent Gateway," rolling out in beta for companies and developers. The gateway runs on the open-standard Model Context Protocol, which lets AI systems connect to external services and data. Its central promise: agents can complete shopping tasks without receiving the user's personal information or purchase history.

Wednesday's announcement also updated Walmart's terms for AI agents. The new terms emphasize customer approval requirements and bar agents from receiving customers' payment-card information.

Why is Walmart courting agents while Amazon blocks them?

The strategy diverges sharply from Amazon. The e-commerce giant has moved to stop agents from Perplexity and Meta from shopping through Amazon on behalf of customers. Walmart is running the opposite play — building infrastructure that welcomes outside AI systems while it develops its own agent in parallel.

The company has track record here. Walmart was one of the first major retailers to integrate purchasing with OpenAI's ChatGPT, and it joined forces with Google's Gemini earlier this year. Its own Sparky AI assistant, launched in 2025, has continued to rack up wins the company publicly touts.

Both new products — Agent Profiles and Agent Gateway — aim to scale agentic AI commerce while keeping shoppers informed and their personal data protected.

What does Walmart's leadership say?

Keeping customers in control of their AI commerce experiences is key, Walmart U.S. Executive Vice President of E-commerce and Marketing Tracy Poulliot said during the RetailClub AI Festival conference in California last month.

"It's really not just about technology for technology's sake," Poulliot said of Walmart's AI strategy. "It's pointing the technology at a problem that creates meaningful value for the customer."

What happens next?

Agent Profiles arrive within roughly a month; Agent Gateway's beta opens to companies and developers on an unspecified timeline. Together they position Walmart as the infrastructure provider for agent-driven retail — betting that welcoming third-party AI, on its terms and its rails, beats keeping the agents out.

The bet's success will hinge on whether shoppers actually trust an AI with a budget — and whether Walmart's approval and privacy guardrails hold as external agents scale.