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The AI shopping war just got spicy.
Amazon and Walmart are taking completely different approaches to one of ecommerce’s biggest upcoming battles:
Who controls the AI agent that actually buys the product?
Walmart is opening its doors.
Amazon is currently keeping outsiders outside.
Walmart announced Agent Gateway on October 21, giving external AI shopping agents a way to search Walmart inventory and potentially purchase products on behalf of customers through the Model Context Protocol. Walmart is also introducing Agent Profiles that can let shoppers set rules such as spending limits and approval requirements.
Amazon has gone in the opposite direction.
It previously blocked Meta’s Muse shopping agent from accessing Amazon, citing concerns around unauthorized access to customer accounts, data scraping and transactions. Amazon still has its own shopping assistant, but outside agents don’t currently get the same freedom.
And this could become a very big deal.
Welcome to Agentic Commerce
Today you search.
Tomorrow your AI might search for you.
You might simply say:
“Order me the same protein bars as last month, but find whoever has the best deal.”
And your AI agent checks five marketplaces, compares delivery dates, reads reviews and buys the winner.
No Google search.
No Amazon search results page.
No scrolling through sponsored listings.
The AI becomes the shopper.
That’s agentic commerce.
And suddenly the question isn’t just:
“How do I rank?”
It becomes:
“Can the agent even access my product?”
That’s a totally different ecommerce game.
Walmart Sellers Could Get an Early Advantage
Only a minority of shoppers currently say they’re comfortable handing full purchasing control to AI agents, so we’re still early. SellerBites cites Coveo research putting that number at 16%.
But ecommerce trends don’t usually wait until everyone is comfortable before they matter.
If AI purchasing grows, Walmart sellers could find their products accessible through a new discovery and transaction channel while Amazon sellers remain inside Amazon’s closed ecosystem.
And AI shoppers don’t browse the same way humans do.
They don’t care if your main image looks sexy.
They care whether the structured data tells them exactly what the product is.
- Size.
- Compatibility.
- Price.
- Availability.
- Delivery speed.
- Variants.
- Specifications.
Clean product data is about to get much more important.
The New SEO Might Be AIO
For years sellers obsessed over ranking for keywords.
Then came Amazon SEO.
Then Google Shopping feeds.
Then AEO and GEO.
Now we’re heading toward something even more practical:
Making sure machines can understand and transact with your catalog.
The brands that win won’t necessarily be the ones shouting the loudest.
They may be the ones giving AI agents the cleanest data.
Amazon will probably evolve its position as agentic commerce develops.
But Walmart has already planted its flag.
And if your brand sells on multiple marketplaces, this is another reason not to put every egg inside one Amazon basket.
Because the next customer visiting your Walmart listing might not actually be a customer.
It might be their AI.
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