Walmart's Bold AI Overhaul Could Drive Efficiency, Margins And Market Edge
Walmart (NYSE:WMT) is revamping its artificial intelligence agent strategy to streamline the user experience. After building dozens of AI agents across various systems with separate interfaces, the company realized the fragmented setup was confusing for users.
In response, Walmart is consolidating those tools into four unified “super agents,” each designed for a specific group: customers, employees, engineers, and sellers or suppliers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Each super agent will serve as a single access point, drawing from multiple backend AI tools to simplify interaction.
Chief Technology Officer Suresh Kumar explained that having separate agents for payroll and merchandising created unnecessary complexity. The new approach aims to eliminate that friction:
- Sparky, the customer-facing super agent, is live.
- The supplier-facing agent, Marty, is set to launch in the coming months.
- Employee and engineering agents are expected next year.
These agents will be built using the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open-source standard Anthropic developed. This standard allows super agents to communicate with other agents, apps, and internal data systems. Walmart is now updating older agents to meet this standard.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon emphasized that AI is transforming the company’s operations and said the leadership fully supports expanding its use. McMillon recently hired Daniel Danker from Instacart to lead global AI acceleration and is also seeking an AI platforms leader to support the strategy.
Walmart’s stock has gained 7% year-to-date, compared to Amazon.com’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) 6% returns. Despite earlier pledges to keep them stable amid tariff pressures, Amazon has quietly raised prices on everyday items. Since President Donald Trump’s February tariff announcement, Amazon has increased prices on low-cost household products by an average of 5%, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of nearly 2,500 items.
In contrast, Walmart responded to the same tariff climate by cutting prices on similar products by nearly 2%, signaling a competitive shift in pricing strategy. While Amazon cited rising shipping costs as a challenge to profitability on these items, Walmart benefited from in-store purchases of higher-margin goods that helped offset those losses.
Amazon disputed the Journal’s findings, stating the analyzed items don’t accurately reflect overall pricing trends.
WMT Price Action: Walmart stock was up 0.12% at $96.72 premarket at last check on Friday.
Read Next
Image: Shutterstock
© 2025 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
