Walmart and Amazon Diverge on AI Agents, Reshaping E-Commerce Control

Walmart is giving AI agents a dedicated front door. On Oct. 21, it unveiled an Agent Gateway and Agent Profiles that let approved assistants shop for customers across Walmart and Sam’s Club, with separate identities, default approvals and optional spending caps. Amazon chose the opposite path: it sued Perplexity, blocked Meta’s Muse and invoked its terms of use. The clash is about who writes the rules when software buys.

• Walmart’s gateway: an invitation-only beta built on Model Context Protocol and tied to the Sparky assistant.
• Agent Profiles: due next month, with per-agent identities, approval by default and limits such as $50, $100 or $200.
• Amazon’s resistance: a lawsuit against Perplexity, a block on Meta’s Muse and a terms-of-use strategy.
• The core question: whether merchants or agent vendors control identity, spending and liability.

A governed channel, not an open house

Walmart CEO John Furner presented the plans. The Agent Gateway promises a faster, more reliable route than having agents browse a site designed for humans. It runs on Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open standard Anthropic released in November 2024, and is an early, invitation-only beta for companies and developers. Walmart already integrates with Muse, ChatGPT and Gemini but has not named launch partners.

Agent Profiles arrive next month. Walmart creates one the first time an agent shops through the gateway; the customer signs in to link it, and Walmart says only it sees that step. Agent orders appear separately. Every purchase needs approval by default, but customers can authorize spending within a preset limit, with $50, $100 and $200 as examples. Walmart does not specify whether the cap is per order, day or month, and may still require extra approval inside it.

Agents get no card details and cannot change payment methods. They see only task-relevant information and the same prices as humans. Walmart says an agent can reorder usual items without receiving the full purchase history. Returns apply even when an agent “does not act as intended,” and agents that violate the terms are blocked.

Amazon’s wall: courts, contracts and ads

Amazon’s resistance reflects its economics. It booked $19.8 billion in advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2026, and EMARKETER expects US ad revenue to rise 17.9% to $56.71 billion in 2026. An agent that completes a purchase does not browse sponsored placements.

Amazon sued Perplexity on Nov. 4, 2025, alleging computer fraud and risks to customer data. It won a preliminary injunction in March 2026, but the Ninth Circuit vacated it on Aug. 4. The court reasoned that the user, not the AI company, accesses Amazon’s computers when the assistant runs on the user’s device, and called the agent “a tool, not a person.” It declined to create a new legal regime for agentic AI, leaving Amazon free to regulate access through its terms.

Amazon then used those terms against Meta’s Muse on Sept. 20, warning that continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violated its Conditions of Use. Amazon said Meta had not asked permission, Muse did not identify itself and it appeared to capture and store customer credentials.

Yet CEO Andy Jassy has not rejected agents outright. On the third-quarter 2025 earnings call, he said:

“We expect, over time, to partner with third-party agents,” but Amazon must find a way “that makes the customer experience good.” “Right now, I would say the customer experience is not. There’s no personalization, no purchase history.”

The open-versus-closed story is too simple

Walmart’s approach is not pure openness. It blocks agents that break its rules and routes them through its own assistant, making the gateway a governed channel with a toll. Amazon’s objection is less to agents as a concept than to unidentified agents that bypass its terms. The split tracks market position: the challenger gains from easier access, while the leader protects a storefront that monetizes attention.

Walmart has tested the other side. It was a launch partner for OpenAI’s integrated payment in September 2025, then said in March 2026 that ChatGPT purchases converted three times worse than regular links. OpenAI closed the feature that month. The gateway is a hedge.

For shoppers, the practical question is what they authorize when an agent can spend their money. Walmart’s controls reduce immediate risk, but it has not said which agents are in the beta, how violations are detected, which categories are restricted or when the terms take effect. The larger struggle is whether merchants or agent vendors write the rules. Walmart’s answer is a named profile, a capped budget and a returns desk. Amazon’s is a legal and contractual wall. Both aim to keep the checkout, and the customer relationship, under merchant control.