Walmart announced on Wednesday a set of new technologies designed to let AI agents shop and buy on its website on customers' behalf, according to TechCrunch. The centerpiece is Agent Gateway, an MCP server that connects approved AI agents to Walmart's online inventory so they can search for products and complete purchases for their users.
The move puts Walmart directly against Amazon, which recently started blocking AI agents from making purchases for online shoppers, as TechCrunch reports. Walmart president and CEO John Furner presented the plans at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, framing them as preparation for a future in which agentic shopping becomes mainstream. The technology will cover both Walmart and its discount warehouse chain, Sam's Club.
How Walmart Agent Gateway works
Agent Gateway is built on the Model Context Protocol, or MCP, the standard originally created by Anthropic to let AI agents connect to external data sources, tools and workflows. In Walmart's case, an approved agent can tap into the retailer's online catalog and place orders for the person it represents. Walmart says the gateway also lets customers shop for their usual brands or items without handing their personal information or purchase history directly to the agent.
Walmart had already partnered with Meta's Muse agent and offers integrations with popular AI apps including ChatGPT and Gemini, so the gateway extends an existing push rather than starting from zero.
Agent Profiles and spending controls
Alongside the gateway, Walmart is rolling out Agent Profiles next month. The feature lets customers authorize each AI agent with a dedicated profile inside their Walmart account, so an agent's purchases appear separately from their own. Shoppers can require approval for every single transaction or allow purchases up to a spending limit they set themselves.
Walmart compares the setup to adding someone as an authorized user on a credit card: their transactions are identified and their spending can be capped. An Agent Profile is created the first time a customer uses a given agent through the Walmart Agent Gateway. Users link it to their Walmart account, set their controls, and can delete the profile at any time. No Walmart+ membership is needed, only a regular Walmart account.
