The news: Walmart Inc. announced a partnership with OpenAI to enable customers of the retailer and its Sam’s Club stores to make purchases within ChatGPT using its Instant Checkout feature.

• Shoppers will be able to purchase apparel, packaged foods, entertainment, and other products from Walmart and Sam’s Club, as well as items from third-party sellers on the retailer’s platform. However, fresh food will not be included in the initial rollout, the company told Bloomberg.
• Customers’ Walmart and Sam’s Club accounts will be automatically linked to ChatGPT.
• The partnership will go live later this fall.

Walmart’s union with ChatGPT reflects the retailer’s broader strategy around agentic commerce. The company is actively preparing for a future in which third-party AI agents interact directly with its platform, and working to minimize potential friction in that process.

Amazon plays defense: By contrast, Amazon is imposing restrictions to keep AI chatbots from stealing traffic and weakening its relationship with customers.

• Earlier this year, Amazon updated its legal policies to specify how agents can interact with its site, barring behavior that copies humans and evading measures like captchas designed to weed out bots.
• The retailer also reserves the right to bar or limit agents’ access, use, or interactions with its services at its discretion.
• Those moves are designed to protect the retailer’s lucrative advertising business, which as of Q2 accounted for more than 10% of net revenues.

Amazon is betting that the stickiness of Prime membership coupled with more relevant, AI-enhanced shopping experiences will solidify its status as consumers’ go-to ecommerce platform. But its insistence on closing itself off to third-party agents creates an opening for Walmart and other retailers to win sales as more consumers rely on AI chatbots as shopping assistants.

However: Amazon’s defensive posture may not hurt it in the short term. More than half (54%) of US adults don’t see the need for AI shopping assistants, according to a July YouGov survey, while 34% cite data privacy and security concerns. Worries about inaccurate information and ease of use are also barriers, although that could quickly change as consumers become accustomed to interacting with AI chatbots.

Still, there is rising interest in AI agents from consumers looking to save money and simplify the shopping experience.

• 42% of US adults are somewhat or very likely to allow an agent to purchase on their behalf if it could guarantee the best possible price, according to an August YouGov poll.
• More than two-thirds (68%) of global shoppers are interested in agents that could help complete returns and exchanges, according to Salesforce’s Connected Shoppers Report.

Our take: Even if agentic commerce’s adoption is gradual, early movers like Walmart will have the outsize advantage. Being discoverable in channels where users conduct product and pricing research could help retailers reinforce their value proposition and stay top-of-mind with prospective customers as this commerce scales up.

However, the outlook is more complex for Amazon. The retailer is understandably reluctant to hurt its advertising business, even as it prepares for a future in which AI agents routinely aid in shopping. Amazon’s restrictions on AI agent interactions could protect its near-term financial interests, but risks ceding ground to rivals like Walmart with a more collaborative approach to agentic commerce.

Go further: Read our latest reports on AI Agents and the Customer Journey and Why AI Shopping Assistants Won’t Drive an Immediate Shift to Ecommerce.