January 13, 2026
Image Courtesy of Walmart
Walmart Partners with Google To Pioneer Agent-Led Commerce
At NRF’s Big Show, John Furner, Walmart’s incoming CEO, and Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, unveiled a new agent-led commerce partnership that embeds Walmart and Sam’s Club shopping directly into Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot, in a move that turns the chatbot into a shopping assistant capable of guiding transactions from start to finish.
“For years, online shopping has been about key words, filters, drop-down menus and scrolling through multiple pages until you find what you want,” Pichai said. “Now you can type exactly what you’re looking for, including really specific details and words. And AI can do the hard work narrowing it down to what you’re most interested in buying. This is what’s already happening.”
The system offers:
- Smart recommendations: If a user asks what they need for a specific activity, Gemini analyzes the inventories across Walmart and Sam’s Club and suggests the ideal items. Last year, Gemini added Shopping Graph — featuring over 50 billion product listings with more than 2 billion of those listings — to augment suggestions.
- Deep personalization: Customers who link their Google and Walmart accounts will receive suggestions and offers based on their previous purchase history and loyalty status.
- Cart integration: Products selected in the chat can be combined with existing shopping carts at Walmart or Sam’s Club.
The partnership is supported by Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), Google’s just-released AI commerce framework developed in cooperation with major retail players including Walmart, Shopify, Etsy, and Target. Enabling AI agents to interact directly with retailers’ commerce systems, UCP allows retailers to personalize messages, loyalty prompts, and offers within AI‑driven conversations while retaining control over the customer relationship.
Said Pichai, “I think about it like a conversational and knowledgeable sales associate. You can ask it questions and it’ll give proactive recommendations.”
Walmart’s Furner Speaks About the Future of Agent-Led Commerce
Furner discussed other AI agents Walmart already has, including its “Sparky” agent that helps customers shop. He also discussed other AI tools supporting store associates and suppliers. He believes agent-led commerce will reinvent shopping similar to how search reframed e-commerce. He said, “We’re rewriting the retail playbook, which is exciting, and we’re trying to close the gap between I want it and I have it.”
As an example of the Gemini-enhanced shopping tool, he noted that a customer planning a fishing trip to Arkansas could ask Gemini for help, and the system would factor in weather conditions, locale, past purchases, and items already in the Walmart app cart to build a complete shopping solution — with gear and food delivered to a hotel upon arrival.
“These kinds of experiences we think will be great for our customers,” Furner said. “We know their time is precious, and our purpose to save people money and live better has a big element of helping people save time.”
In October, Walmart struck a similar deal with rival AI platform, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, with Perplexity, Amazon, Microsoft and Anthropic also promising AI-driven models to replace traditional search.
BrainTrust
Joel Rubinson
President, Rubinson Partners, Inc.
Mark Ryski
Founder, CEO & Author, HeadCount Corporation
Mohamed Amer, PhD
CEO & Strategic Board Advisor, Strategy Doctor
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
What do you think of the potential of Walmart’s agentic AI partnership with Google?
Is Google positioned any better than OpenAI, Perplexity, Amazon, and any others to lead the push toward agentic commerce?
Poll
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Do I think this will become more common? sure Do I think it will make much difference? Uhmmm….most shopping isn’t very difficult – I want a box of cornflakes – but if the thinking is that AI will bridge the gap between abstract desire and purchase – I’m hungry, what should I have to eat? – then I’ll have to see the results; so far, what I’ve seen from “AI thinking for me” isn’t very impressive. Certainly that will improve over time, but how much I don’t know.
Simplicity always wins. ChatGPT (and other agents) are already simplynig life but giving answers rather than links to click on. Shopping by just stating what you want? What could be easier than that?! Now marketers have a new battlefield to win on. I think this will make brand top of mindness even more important.
Walmart’s agentic AI partnership with Google is a strategically sensible play at this stage of agentic commerce evolution. We’re still in the early innings of what could be a profound shift in how consumers discover, shop, and transact — moving from static search and recommendation toward contextual, proactive commerce experiences. Partnering with Google allows Walmart to tap into one of the deepest repositories of intent signals and browsing behavior on the planet, while bringing Walmart’s massive inventory and fulfillment network to bear. But it’s important to remember that no single partnership or technology vendor has a monopoly on how this all ultimately unfolds. Engaging multiple partners — Google, OpenAI, Perplexity, and others — enables Walmart and other retailers to gain diverse insights, mitigate risk, and accelerate learning about what truly moves the needle for customers and the business.
Is Google inherently better positioned than others to lead agentic commerce? Not necessarily — at least not yet. Each of the major players brings different strengths to the table. Google has unparalleled search intent data and massive user touchpoints; OpenAI has rapidly advanced large-language and reasoning models; and other innovators are experimenting with specialized or domain-optimized agents. At this point, agentic commerce is more ecosystem development than a winner-take-all sprint. Early partnerships give retailers like Walmart the chance to test different approaches, cross-validate learnings, and iterate on customer experiences that are truly context-aware and value-generative rather than simply generative for its own sake.
Over time, it’s possible that one partner could emerge as the “go-to” platform for agentic commerce—or, more plausibly, a network of interoperable partners could form the de facto infrastructure powering different parts of the journey. Retailers should resist putting all their bets on a single vendor too early, as the landscape remains fluid, standards are evolving, and customer preferences are being shaped in real time. The smartest approach in this nascent period is to remain agnostic, experimental, and partnership-driven, allowing for learning at scale while positioning the business to adopt the best tools and integrations as they prove their value.
I attended the session with Mr. Furner and Mr. Pichai – it was impressive. The fact is, Walmart and Google have been partners for many years, and this represents another step in the evolution. There is so much noise about Agentic AI (and AI in general), it was refreshing to see a demonstration that will deliver a much cleaner, faster, and overall better experience for online shoppers. I think Walmart is prudent to be partnering with Google, as well as the other major AI players, since you never know who might deliver the best solution. But it’s hard to deny Google’s superiority, not just in creating AI tools, but for their actual experience in working with retailers.The other competitors have significantly less real experience working with physical retailers.
Walmart’s multi-platform agent strategy, integrating with Google, OpenAI, and others, exemplifies sophisticated pseudo-agency: surface convenience while preserving platform intermediation. The critical test is whether Walmart allows non-partner agents to access inventory data. Evidence suggests it doesn’t. Walmart’s APIs require partnership approval; developers must apply for access rather than openly query product data. This gatekeeping prevents genuine consumer-controlled agents from accessing the same inventory information that is provided to approved platform partners. When only Google, OpenAI, and negotiated partners can mediate commerce, retailers aren’t building consumer agency infrastructure; they’re building walled gardens accessible only to approved platforms.
The verification challenge becomes structural: consumers cannot distinguish between agents that genuinely optimize for their benefit and those that optimize for platform revenue when the access architecture itself is restricted.
Agentic commerce is moving from experimentation into real, end-to-end execution. What stands out to me is not just the conversational interface, but the tight coupling of intent, context, and transaction. When an AI agent can reason across inventory, loyalty data, fulfillment options, and even trip context, the experience shifts from “searching for products” to “delegating a task.” That is a meaningful leap, especially for a retailer like Walmart, which already operates at massive scale across physical and digital channels.
Google brings decades of strength in intent modeling, data graphs, and ecosystem reach, but Google no longer has a monopoly on disruption. OpenAI, Amazon, and others are equally capable, just approaching the problem from different entry points like productivity, marketplaces, or developer platforms.
Longer term, I agree that agentic shopping will become table stakes. The differentiator will not be the agent itself, but how well it integrates with a retailer’s existing stack and respects customer trust. Platforms like Bloomreach are making this more accessible by allowing retailers to embed agentic capabilities directly into search, discovery, and engagement without handing over the entire customer relationship. In that sense, this will be less about one winner and more about who can execute cleanly, responsibly, and at scale.
Not only will this become more common, it will become how people search. Who wants to winnow through a bunch of links when they can get answers to their questions or find the products they are looking for without as much work. Are the answers and offers going to be neutral? Are they today with SEO?
Isn’t this just the next level of browsing, like we have been doing for years, on Google or Amazon? Agents understand requests better and manage the entire process from discovery to fulfillment, creating “frictionless”, proactive buying journeys. Sounds great, and why not?
To me, though, it will make online shopping more complex, not easier. I am with Craig Sunderstrum’s example. How hard is buying cornflakes? And I find the promise of “suggestions” really annoying. I get “something you might like” daily, and I am trying to stop them, to no avail. To that, good suggestions or those that will likely
lead to more sales. It is all entertainment. But, isn’t shopping?
There are a lot of agentic platforms and we’re currently in an era where all are trying to make a land-grab in terms in terms of locking in retailers and other partners. We are not yet at the stage where any have dominance. Consumers are experimenting and the technology is constantly evolving. It will be a long time until we see a more settled state without churn.
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Do I think this will become more common? sure Do I think it will make much difference? Uhmmm….most shopping isn’t very difficult – I want a box of cornflakes – but if the thinking is that AI will bridge the gap between abstract desire and purchase – I’m hungry, what should I have to eat? – then I’ll have to see the results; so far, what I’ve seen from “AI thinking for me” isn’t very impressive. Certainly that will improve over time, but how much I don’t know.
Simplicity always wins. ChatGPT (and other agents) are already simplynig life but giving answers rather than links to click on. Shopping by just stating what you want? What could be easier than that?! Now marketers have a new battlefield to win on. I think this will make brand top of mindness even more important.
Walmart’s agentic AI partnership with Google is a strategically sensible play at this stage of agentic commerce evolution. We’re still in the early innings of what could be a profound shift in how consumers discover, shop, and transact — moving from static search and recommendation toward contextual, proactive commerce experiences. Partnering with Google allows Walmart to tap into one of the deepest repositories of intent signals and browsing behavior on the planet, while bringing Walmart’s massive inventory and fulfillment network to bear. But it’s important to remember that no single partnership or technology vendor has a monopoly on how this all ultimately unfolds. Engaging multiple partners — Google, OpenAI, Perplexity, and others — enables Walmart and other retailers to gain diverse insights, mitigate risk, and accelerate learning about what truly moves the needle for customers and the business.
Is Google inherently better positioned than others to lead agentic commerce? Not necessarily — at least not yet. Each of the major players brings different strengths to the table. Google has unparalleled search intent data and massive user touchpoints; OpenAI has rapidly advanced large-language and reasoning models; and other innovators are experimenting with specialized or domain-optimized agents. At this point, agentic commerce is more ecosystem development than a winner-take-all sprint. Early partnerships give retailers like Walmart the chance to test different approaches, cross-validate learnings, and iterate on customer experiences that are truly context-aware and value-generative rather than simply generative for its own sake.
Over time, it’s possible that one partner could emerge as the “go-to” platform for agentic commerce—or, more plausibly, a network of interoperable partners could form the de facto infrastructure powering different parts of the journey. Retailers should resist putting all their bets on a single vendor too early, as the landscape remains fluid, standards are evolving, and customer preferences are being shaped in real time. The smartest approach in this nascent period is to remain agnostic, experimental, and partnership-driven, allowing for learning at scale while positioning the business to adopt the best tools and integrations as they prove their value.
I attended the session with Mr. Furner and Mr. Pichai – it was impressive. The fact is, Walmart and Google have been partners for many years, and this represents another step in the evolution. There is so much noise about Agentic AI (and AI in general), it was refreshing to see a demonstration that will deliver a much cleaner, faster, and overall better experience for online shoppers. I think Walmart is prudent to be partnering with Google, as well as the other major AI players, since you never know who might deliver the best solution. But it’s hard to deny Google’s superiority, not just in creating AI tools, but for their actual experience in working with retailers.The other competitors have significantly less real experience working with physical retailers.
Walmart’s multi-platform agent strategy, integrating with Google, OpenAI, and others, exemplifies sophisticated pseudo-agency: surface convenience while preserving platform intermediation. The critical test is whether Walmart allows non-partner agents to access inventory data. Evidence suggests it doesn’t. Walmart’s APIs require partnership approval; developers must apply for access rather than openly query product data. This gatekeeping prevents genuine consumer-controlled agents from accessing the same inventory information that is provided to approved platform partners. When only Google, OpenAI, and negotiated partners can mediate commerce, retailers aren’t building consumer agency infrastructure; they’re building walled gardens accessible only to approved platforms.
The verification challenge becomes structural: consumers cannot distinguish between agents that genuinely optimize for their benefit and those that optimize for platform revenue when the access architecture itself is restricted.
Agentic commerce is moving from experimentation into real, end-to-end execution. What stands out to me is not just the conversational interface, but the tight coupling of intent, context, and transaction. When an AI agent can reason across inventory, loyalty data, fulfillment options, and even trip context, the experience shifts from “searching for products” to “delegating a task.” That is a meaningful leap, especially for a retailer like Walmart, which already operates at massive scale across physical and digital channels.
Google brings decades of strength in intent modeling, data graphs, and ecosystem reach, but Google no longer has a monopoly on disruption. OpenAI, Amazon, and others are equally capable, just approaching the problem from different entry points like productivity, marketplaces, or developer platforms.
Longer term, I agree that agentic shopping will become table stakes. The differentiator will not be the agent itself, but how well it integrates with a retailer’s existing stack and respects customer trust. Platforms like Bloomreach are making this more accessible by allowing retailers to embed agentic capabilities directly into search, discovery, and engagement without handing over the entire customer relationship. In that sense, this will be less about one winner and more about who can execute cleanly, responsibly, and at scale.
Not only will this become more common, it will become how people search. Who wants to winnow through a bunch of links when they can get answers to their questions or find the products they are looking for without as much work. Are the answers and offers going to be neutral? Are they today with SEO?
Isn’t this just the next level of browsing, like we have been doing for years, on Google or Amazon? Agents understand requests better and manage the entire process from discovery to fulfillment, creating “frictionless”, proactive buying journeys. Sounds great, and why not?
To me, though, it will make online shopping more complex, not easier. I am with Craig Sunderstrum’s example. How hard is buying cornflakes? And I find the promise of “suggestions” really annoying. I get “something you might like” daily, and I am trying to stop them, to no avail. To that, good suggestions or those that will likely
lead to more sales. It is all entertainment. But, isn’t shopping?
There are a lot of agentic platforms and we’re currently in an era where all are trying to make a land-grab in terms in terms of locking in retailers and other partners. We are not yet at the stage where any have dominance. Consumers are experimenting and the technology is constantly evolving. It will be a long time until we see a more settled state without churn.