Walmart bets on AI super agents to boost e-commerce growth
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Walmart unveiled plans on Thursday to roll out a suite of AI-powered "super agents" designed to improve the shopping experience for customers and streamline operations.
The world's largest retailer said the four agents powered by agentic AI - designed for Walmart shoppers, store employees, suppliers and sellers, and software developers - would soon be the primary way people engage with Walmart.
The super agents will be the entry point for every AI interaction these groups have with Walmart, replacing several existing agents and AI tools, along with new ones yet to be built, the company said. Walmart is betting on AI to drive its e-commerce growth, aiming for online sales to account for 50% of its total sales within five years. The company reported annual sales of $648 billion last year.
By harnessing AI to streamline the shopping process - from discovering new products and helping with returns to improving delivery speeds - the retailer hopes it can attract more shoppers away from Amazon, which has also introduced a range of AI-powered tools for sellers and shoppers.
Walmart's push comes as the short-term financial payoff of AI remains uncertain and concerns over how it might affect jobs across the industry.
One of the agents, Sparky, is already available for shoppers on Walmart's app as a Gen-AIpowered tool. Currently it assists customers with getting product suggestions for an athletic activity, finding the right ink for their printer,or summarizing product reviews, among other options.
In its "super agent" form it will be able to reorder items, plan an event such as a "unicorn-themed party"and through computer vision be able to offer product recipes by just looking at the contents of a shopper's fridge, Hari Vasudev, Walmart's U.S. chief technology officer, said at an event in New York.
Agentic AI is the next iteration of generative AI, in that it needs minimal human intervention to make decisions and achieve specific tasks.
Walmart is also developing an "Associate" super agent, to be rolled out in the coming months, which will allow workers and corporate staff to do things such as submit an application for parental leave or give store managers immediate information on sales data for a certain category or a product with minimal input. Employees now use separate AI tools to handle those queries, a company spokesperson said.
For sellers, suppliers, and advertisers, Walmart is developing a super agent called "Marty" to streamline the onboarding process, manage orders and create ad campaigns. Itis also working on a "Developer" super agent, which will be the platform on which all future AI tools will be tested, built, and launched, the company said.
"Agents can help automate and simplify pretty much everything that we do," Suresh Kumar, Walmart's chief technology officer said. He added that the company chose to launch these super agents now because "customers are ready, they are using AI in pretty much everything they do."
The company declined to say whether the super agents would replace jobs. Dave Glick, senior vice president of enterprise business systems, said it would create new jobs without elaborating further.
On Wednesday, Walmart had two AI-related announcements: it hired former Instacart executive Daniel Danker as executive vice president (EVP) for AI acceleration, product and design and created a new EVP, AI role that is yet to be filled.
While retail has largely avoided AI-related layoffs, the tech industry has been hit hard, even in a historically strong market and resilient economy. In June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said generative AI and agents will reduce its total corporate workforce over the next few years. Microsoft has emphasized that AI will boost productivity, but it has laid offthousands of employees, while Google has laid off hundreds of employees.
Walmart has not linked any job cuts directly to AI, but it has been downsizing its corporate staff and is modernizing e-commerce fulfillment centers with automation, resulting in some workforce reductions.
(Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in New York; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
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