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Walmart announced on October 21, 2026 that it will open its store to artificial intelligence agents that buy on customers' behalf, under its own control and protection rules. The move, presented by president and CEO John Furner at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, covers Walmart.com and Sam's Club and has three parts: Agent Profiles, the Walmart Agent Gateway and a set of terms for AI agents.
A profile of its own for each agent
Today, when a customer uses an AI agent, the agent signs in with the customer's account and all purchases appear together, with no distinction. With Agent Profiles, launching next month, each authorized agent will have a dedicated profile inside the customer's account, so its purchases appear separately from the rest.
The customer will also decide how to approve purchases: requiring approval for every purchase, or authorizing the agent to buy within a spending limit they set — Walmart cites $50, $100 and $200 as examples. The profile can be deleted at any time, and no Walmart+ membership is needed to use the feature, according to TechCrunch.
An entrance built for agents
The Walmart Agent Gateway is an MCP (Model Context Protocol, the protocol created by Anthropic) server that will give approved agents a faster and more reliable way to search inventory and buy, instead of browsing the site as if they were people. The launch begins with a beta for companies and developers.
According to Walmart, the gateway will also help the agent find the customer's usual items — such as a milk brand or a type of bread — without sharing the customer's full purchase history or personal information with the agent.
The rules of the game
Walmart's terms state that the customer is in control and that the company's returns process applies even when an agent does not act as intended. Agents do not receive the customer's payment-card data, cannot add or change payment methods, may only access the information needed for the task, and cannot act beyond what the shopper intends. Agents that break the rules will be blocked from the site.
Walmart also says the prices an agent sees are the same prices a human would see on Walmart.com, with applicable offers and fees shown before purchase.
The contrast with Amazon
The decision runs in the opposite direction from its main competitor: according to TechCrunch, Amazon began blocking AI agents from completing purchases for customers, including Meta's Muse assistant, and has fought with Perplexity over the Comet browser's shopping agent. Walmart, by contrast, had already announced a partnership with Muse and offers integrations with ChatGPT, Gemini and other assistants. In practice, the dispute is about who sets the terms for agent-led commerce — and Walmart is betting that opening the door, with clear rules, is the better path.
Image credit: a Walmart store in Manchester, Connecticut, in August 2014. Photo by Mike Mozart, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sources: Walmart — Making It Possible for Agents to Shop on Behalf of Customers; TechCrunch — While Amazon blocks AI agents, Walmart rolls out the welcome mat
Transparency: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, based on cross-checking public social media posts and the internet sources listed below. We recommend consulting the original sources to confirm the details.
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