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For all the new things that AI can introduce you to, corporate America is still figuring out what to do with it.
Walmart has an early answer: a more intuitive way to shop.
Customers can soon make Walmart purchases directly from ChatGPT, giving people a more concrete, everyday use case to ground the abstract, billion-dollar dealmaking that has defined the AI industry in recent weeks.
But if agentic commerce is one of the technology’s first offerings of practical worth, it also signals, at least in these early days, the gap between gargantuan investments and the marginal business gains flowing from them. For every partnership like this, it seems there are far more between OpenAI and one of the chip suppliers on the other side of the supply chain. And of the two kinds of deals, supplier and customer, the lack of the latter underscores the need for investor and corporate patience.
In the same way that online order pick-ups save people time by not having to navigate physical stores, an AI agent can spare consumers from a mess of menus, search bars, and endless scrolling. That ups the convenience, making an AI-powered shopping experience more attractive for consumers, potentially locking in repeat customers, increasing order numbers, and attracting new shoppers.
As Michael Lasser, an analyst at UBS, said in a note following the announcement, it’s another example of Walmart adopting new technologies early. And it pairs well with ChatGPT’s ability to help people discover new products —a fitting partnership.
Give ChatGPT your kid’s back-to-school supply list, and voila, the chatbot fills a digital shopping cart ready for instant checkout. Or maybe your camera roll has pictures of interior designs that have inspired you, kitchen gear you’d like to add to your culinary arsenal, or gadgets to equip your home office. Your Walmart agent is ready to buy.
But for all the convenience and personalization agentic commerce promises to usher in, there’s also an element of smallness and mediocrity to it all. Does online shopping really need to be easier? (Parents and people in a relationship might have strong opinions here.) Is making the online shopping experience even more frictionless something consumers have been clamoring for? Will people miss having the choice — or illusion of it — of a virtual wall of products, just like the IRL version?
