Walmart is opening its website to AI agents that make purchases on customers' behalf. Next month it will launch Agent Profiles, dedicated profiles inside the Walmart account where each agent is authorized separately and its purchases are tracked apart from the user's own. By default every agent purchase requires approval, but users can set a budget, for example up to $100, and turn the agent off at any time.
The move marks a clear break from Amazon, which has blocked shopping agents from Perplexity and Meta's Muse assistant. Back in September Amazon had already cut Muse's access to its store, after Meta refused to switch the bot off. Walmart instead accepts agents as long as they follow its rules: agents may not take actions beyond what the shopper intends or change the customer's payment method, and they can access only the information needed for the task. Agents that break the terms get blocked.
How the connection works
Agents connect through the Walmart Agent Gateway, which uses the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that lets AI models plug into different web services. According to Walmart, this avoids the hiccups an agent meets when navigating a browser and keeps agents from reading the shopper's purchase history or personal data. If a customer always buys the same sourdough bread or a particular milk brand, the agent can find those items without receiving the rest of the history.
Walmart extends the same option to Sam's Club. The approach fits the direction other companies are taking on access standards for agents, where customers set the permissions and businesses choose the channels.
Why the contrast with Amazon
For Walmart the logic is simple: an agent that brings a customer into its store is one more sales channel. Amazon, which dominates US e-commerce, risks losing control over who mediates product and price choices.
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