Walmart just announced a groundbreaking partnership with OpenAI that transforms ChatGPT into a shopping platform. Starting this fall, customers can browse Walmart products, add items to cart, and complete purchases without ever leaving the chatbot. This marks a major shift in how we'll shop online, moving from traditional search-and-scroll to conversational commerce.
Walmart is betting big on conversational commerce. The retail giant announced Tuesday it's partnering with OpenAI to let customers shop directly through ChatGPT, marking one of the most significant integrations between a major retailer and AI platform to date.
The integration works through a simple 'buy' button that appears when customers browse products in ChatGPT. After linking their Walmart accounts, shoppers can purchase everything from groceries (excluding fresh food) to household essentials without switching apps or websites. Sam's Club members get additional perks, including meal planning assistance and personalized restocking recommendations.
This isn't just another shopping widget. Walmart says the partnership represents a fundamental shift from reactive to proactive commerce. Instead of customers searching through endless product lists, ChatGPT will learn shopping patterns and suggest items before customers even realize they need them. The system launches with third-party seller support when it rolls out later this fall.
The move builds on OpenAI's recent announcement of its agentic shopping system, which already includes partnerships with Etsy and Shopify sellers. But Walmart brings something different to the table - scale and logistics infrastructure that could make AI shopping mainstream practically overnight.
"For many years now, e-commerce shopping experiences have consisted of a search bar and a long list of item responses. That is about to change," Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon said in a prepared statement. "There is a native AI experience coming that is multimedia, personalized, and contextual."
The partnership isn't Walmart's only AI play. The company recently launched Sparky, its own generative AI shopping assistant designed to compete directly with Amazon's Alexa and other voice commerce platforms. Sparky handles product discovery, comparisons, and purchases while supporting multimodal inputs from text, images, audio, and video.
