Walmart has unveiled a major artificial intelligence overhaul, introducing four “super agents” aimed at transforming how customers, employees, suppliers, and developers interact with the retail giant.
The move marks the retail giant’s strategy to streamline operations and capture a bigger slice of the e-commerce market.
The AI-driven agents – designed under the umbrella of agentic AI, which requires minimal human intervention – will consolidate dozens of existing tools into unified platforms tailored to each user group.
The retailer is banking on this streamlined experience to attract more digital shoppers and ramp up efficiency across its $648bn-a-year business. Walmart says it wants e-commerce to account for half of its total sales within five years.
Leading the charge is Sparky, the customer-facing super-agent, already live in Walmart’s app. Currently, it helps users with product suggestions and summarises reviews. In its next iteration, Sparky will be able to reorder products, help plan themed parties, and even suggest recipes based on what’s in a shopper’s fridge using computer vision.
Marty, the seller and supplier agent due to launch soon, will assist with onboarding, managing orders, and launching ad campaigns. Meanwhile, the employee-facing agent will centralise functions like applying for parental leave or retrieving real-time sales data. A developer agent will serve as a hub for building and testing new AI tools.
“Agents can help automate and simplify pretty much everything that we do,” said Suresh Kumar, Walmart’s chief technology officer, noting that fragmented AI interfaces had begun to confuse users. “It became very clear that we could dramatically simplify.”
The company declined to say whether the new AI tools would lead to job cuts. Dave Glick, Walmart’s senior vice president of enterprise systems, said the technology would “create new jobs” but offered no details.
Walmart’s announcement comes as it deepens its AI investment, hiring former Instacart executive Daniel Danker as EVP for AI acceleration. The retailer is also recruiting a leader for its AI platforms team, underscoring its commitment to staying ahead in the evolving retail tech landscape.
