Walmart has officially announced a new partnership with OpenAI that will allow customers to purchase items directly within a chat interface, including things like groceries and household essentials, and then instantly check out.
The company says that the agentic shopping feature will allow Sam’s Club members to prepare meals and resupply necessities when in conversation with the AI.
To use the feature, customers will press a “buy” button in the ChatGPT app after linking their Walmart accounts.
However, products from third-party sellers will also be included when the feature rolls out later this fall.
The company's new agreement with OpenAI will particularly work to allow the retailer to learn and anticipate customers’ needs, making online shopping more tailored and individualized, instead of merely reactive.
The ChatGPT-focused shopping feature will not be the only way for consumers to shop with AI.
In addition to other AI investments, Walmart has recently introduced its own generative AI shopping assistant, Sparky, designed to unearth and compare products and make purchases.
The feature will further expand to include service booking, reordering, and the understanding of multimodal inputs such as texts, images, video and audio.
Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon said in a statement, “For many years now, e-commerce shopping experiences have consisted of a search bar and a long list of item responses. That is about to change.”
The partnership between Walmart and OpenAI underlines a major acceleration into agentic commerce where AI moves beyond searches to meet consumer needs efficiently.