Walmart Teams With Google to Promote ‘Agent-Led Commerce’

The collaboration, announced Sunday (Jan. 11), is built around Google’s new Universal Commerce Protocol and pairs Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) tool with Walmart and Sam Club’s item assortment.

“The transition from traditional web or app search to agent-led commerce represents the next great evolution in retail. We aren’t just watching the shift, we are driving it,” John Furner, Walmart’s in-coming CEO, said in a news release.

“We want to help customers get what they need and want, when and where they want it. Partnering with Google to bring the Walmart experience directly into Gemini is another step toward creating seamless shopping experiences for customers and members that are more intuitive and personal than ever before.”

Under this partnership, Gemini will automatically include Walmart and Sam’s Club in-store and online products when relevant. And because users speak back and forth with Gemini, “there are more opportunities to show relevant products and services throughout the conversation,” the release added.

And when customers link their accounts, Walmart will recommend “complementary items” based on past purchases, combine their order with other items they’ve put in their carts and provide all the benefits of their Walmart+ and Sam’s Club memberships.

Lastly, customers and members can get products delivered where and when they want in under three hours and as fast as 30 minutes, the companies said.

PYMNTS wrote about Walmart’s artificial intelligence (AI) efforts last week, soon after the company moved to introduce advertising into its AI shopping agent, Sparky, signaling an increasing confidence in conversational commerce. 

“Rather than positioning artificial intelligence solely as a utility, Walmart is treating it as a new interface, one capable of guiding discovery in ways that feel more natural than search bars or category menus,” PYMNTS added.

Also last week, Walmart named an AI specialist, Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra, to its board of directors, a move that combines governance with strategic direction at a time when every major retailer is grappling with how AI should guide product recommendations, personalization, supply chain automation and customer engagement.

Prior to joining Superhuman, Mehrotra was chief executive and co-founder of Coda, a productivity and AI platform, and before launching Coda, Mehrotra served as chief product officer and chief technology officer at YouTube.

“The addition is emblematic of a broader tilt: Walmart is not simply adopting artificial intelligence tools; it is embedding AI leadership at the strategic decision-making level,” that report said.