The AI shopping war is heating up, and Walmart is positioning itself to come out on top.
The concept of letting a chatbot buy things on your behalf leapt from the hypothetical realm into reality when ChatGPT rolled out a batch of shopping experiences with major retailers in November.
Then, on Sunday, Google’s AI platform Gemini announced its own commerce approach, which it developed in partnership with many of the same retailers, including the world’s largest, Walmart.
While both services promise to allow customers to find products and complete transactions in a more conversational and automated way, Walmart’s new head of AI, Daniel Danker, said Tuesday that the way Gemini handles transactions is more seamless than ChatGPT does.
“We’re essentially having their AI agent, Gemini, partner with our AI agent to create a unified shopping journey,” he said at the ICR Conference in Orlando. “Imagine it like a window inside of Gemini where our shopping agent kicks in and helps you complete that purchase.”
Google said its new standards create a common language for different companies’ AI agents to interact with.
With Gemini, Danker said, Walmart is able to link a customer’s chat session with their existing Walmart profile and shopping sessions where Gemini wasn’t involved.
“For the most part, our customers aren’t just customers; they’re often members. And so, they’re getting great delivery fees and a great experience that’s really attuned to them,” he said, referring to the subscription service Walmart+. “That member experience shows up directly within Gemini.”
Danker said he expects agentic shopping to help Walmart capture more sales from people who didn’t set out intending to make a purchase. He said this new approach could enable an almost seamless transaction when a person enlists a chatbot to help solve a problem.
For example, if someone turned to Gemini for tips on how to remove a wine stain from a particular brand of carpet, a cleaning product could be added to their existing shopping cart for delivery in one combined shipment, he said.
Danker said working with both ChatGPT and Gemini sets Walmart up to win in AI.
It appears that chatbot-powered shopping is here to stay, with Morgan Stanley analysts estimating that agentic sales could add $115 billion to US e-commerce spending by 2030.
Danker is betting that Walmart’s long-standing reputation for low prices and its growing strength in delivery will give the company a significant edge with customers in AI.
“The most important currency in an agentic shopping world is actually trust and affordability,” Danker said. “Without trust and affordability, it’s very difficult for customers to hand the wheel to someone else and expect that the right thing will happen.”
Danker said Walmart’s broad selection, low prices, and fast fulfillment help it appear more frequently in Gemini and ChatGPT’s shopping recommendations.
“That doesn’t just serve one need, but serves a whole bunch of needs,” he said.
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