Walmart will let AI agents shop its site starting next month

Next month, Walmart will let you connect your own AI agent to its website and shop on your behalf. The retailer says purchases made by agents will require approval by default, and customers can set spending limits — for example, capping an agent at $100 — or turn the agent off at any time.

The move sets Walmart in direct opposition to Amazon. Amazon has blocked Perplexity's shopping agent and Meta's Muse AI assistant from operating on its platform. Walmart is doing the opposite: it is letting AI shoppers in, as long as they follow a set of rules the company has published.

What are the rules for AI agents?

Walmart has outlined explicit terms of behavior for agents operating on its site. The core rule is about scope. "Agents must not take actions beyond what the shopper intends," the company says.

The terms also cover money and data. Agents cannot change a customer's payment method. They may only access the information needed to complete their assigned task — nothing more. Walmart says it will block any agent that doesn't follow these terms.

That enforcement point matters. An open door with a bouncer is different from an open door without one. Walmart's position is that agents are welcome, but only inside guardrails the retailer itself defines and polices.

Takeaway: agents get access, but on Walmart's terms, with blocking as the penalty.

How does it work technically?

Walmart has built what it calls an "Agent Gateway." Agents don't browse the website the way a human does, clicking through pages. Instead, the gateway connects them through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that lets AI agents plug into different services across the web.

The company says this design solves two problems at once. First, it lets agents shop without the hiccups they would run into while navigating a regular browser — the broken flows, captchas, and layout quirks that trip up automated systems. Second, it walls off sensitive data. The gateway prevents agents from reaching a customer's shopping history and personal information.

Walmart gives a concrete example of how that works in practice. "For example, if a customer tends to buy sourdough bread or a particular brand of milk, Walmart will help the agent find those usual items for the customer without sharing the customer's broader shopping history with the agent," the company says.

In other words, Walmart acts as a filter between the agent and the customer's data. The agent learns what it needs to complete the task — find this bread, this brand of milk — and nothing else. The retailer keeps the full picture; the agent gets a need-to-know slice.

The same system will work at Sam's Club, Walmart's warehouse chain. The company says users will be able to shop with AI agents there as well.

Takeaway: agents talk to Walmart through a controlled gateway, not by scraping the site.

What controls do shoppers have?

The centerpiece is a new feature called "Agent Profiles" inside Walmart. This is where agents connect and where customers manage them.

The controls break down into three layers:

• Approval. By default, Walmart requires approval for every purchase an AI agent tries to make. Nothing goes through automatically unless the customer changes that setting.
• Budgets. Customers can instead let an agent shop freely within a certain spending limit — Walmart's example is up to $100 — removing the need to approve each transaction while capping the risk.
• Review and shutdown. Purchases made by the agent are separated from the customer's own purchases inside Agent Profiles, so they can be reviewed independently. And the agent can be turned off at any time.

That separation of agent purchases from human purchases is a small design decision with a big practical effect. It gives customers a clean audit trail: what did I buy, and what did my software buy, never mixed together.

Takeaway: every agent purchase is approved, budgeted, or at least separately logged — and the off switch is always there.

Why does this split with Amazon matter?

The two largest retailers in American e-commerce are now moving in opposite directions on autonomous shopping agents. Amazon has chosen exclusion, blocking Perplexity's shopping agent and Meta's Muse AI assistant from its platform. Walmart has chosen structured admission.

For Walmart, the calculus appears straightforward. AI agents are becoming a real channel through which consumers may soon place orders, and a retailer that blocks them risks losing those sales to a competitor that welcomes them. A structured gateway lets Walmart capture that demand while keeping control over what agents can touch — payment methods, personal data, shopping history — and what they can't.

For Amazon, the calculation is different. Amazon has its own AI shopping ambitions, and blocking third-party agents protects its direct relationship with the customer. The result is a fork in the road: one giant fortress, one giant with a checkpoint.

The stakes run beyond these two companies. If agent-mediated shopping becomes common, retailers everywhere will face the same choice Amazon and Walmart just made — and Walmart's terms, budget caps, and approval flows may become the template others copy. The Model Context Protocol angle matters here too: by connecting through an open standard rather than a bespoke integration, Walmart's gateway could work with a wide range of agents, not just one company's.

Takeaway: Walmart is betting that agent traffic is future revenue; Amazon is betting it's a threat to control.

What happens next month?

The launch arrives next month, when customers will be able to connect their own agents to Walmart through Agent Profiles, with default purchase approval, optional budgets, separate purchase logs, and an always-available off switch. Sam's Club support comes with it.

The open question is adoption — whether customers actually trust a piece of software to fill a cart on their behalf, even with a $100 cap and a review screen. Walmart has now built the infrastructure and drawn the rules of the road; the next signal to watch is whether Amazon holds its blockade or answers with a gateway of its own.