Walmart opens its site to AI shopping agents with spending limits

Walmart announced on Wednesday that it is opening its online store to AI shopping agents, launching a new “Agent Gateway” and a set of controls for customers who use them. Walmart President and CEO John Furner described the plans at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. The tools will cover both Walmart and Sam’s Club.

How it works

The Agent Gateway is a server built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which TechCrunch says was originally created by Anthropic. It lets approved agents search Walmart’s online inventory and buy on a user’s behalf. Walmart says it also lets an agent find a shopper’s usual items, such as a preferred brand of milk, without handing over the person’s wider purchase history or personal information.

Customers get control through “Agent Profiles,” which Walmart says roll out next month. Each agent gets its own profile in the shopper’s account, created the first time that agent is used through the gateway. The shopper links the profile to their Walmart account and sets the rules. By default, every agent purchase needs approval. Shoppers can instead allow purchases up to a set budget, with The Verge giving $100 as an example. Agent purchases are shown separately from the shopper’s own, and a profile can be deleted or the agent switched off at any time. Walmart compares the setup to adding an authorized user on a credit card. A Walmart+ membership is not required; any Walmart account will do, according to TechCrunch.

Walmart has also published terms for agents:

• Agents must not take actions beyond what the shopper intends.
• They cannot change a customer’s payment method or access payment information.
• They may only access the information needed for the task.
• Agents that violate the terms will be blocked.

Per TechCrunch, Walmart’s returns process also applies when an agent does not act as intended.

Why it matters

Walmart is taking the opposite approach to Amazon. TechCrunch reports that Amazon recently began blocking AI agents from buying for shoppers, and The Verge says Amazon has blocked Perplexity’s shopping agent and Meta’s Muse assistant. TechCrunch adds that various travel and booking sites have also locked agents out. Walmart, by contrast, had already announced a partnership with Meta’s Muse and offers integrations with apps such as ChatGPT and Gemini.

The design leans on permissions rather than open access. Routing agents through MCP means they do not have to work through a browser, which Walmart says avoids problems agents can hit there, and the profile system keeps agent-made orders distinct from the customer’s own. The returns coverage addresses one obvious worry for early users, which is being stuck with an item an agent bought by mistake.

What we don’t know yet

Walmart has not said in the material reported which agents beyond its existing partners will be approved for the gateway, or how it will detect agents that break the terms. The exact rollout date for Agent Profiles within next month was not given.