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Walmart is reworking its approach to AI-powered shopping as OpenAI shifts ChatGPT into product discovery, showing a reset in how agentic shopping will work. Walmart began its partnership with OpenAI in October 2025 and has enabled customers to make purchases inside ChatGPT through its Instant Checkout feature.
After early results fell short of expectations, Walmart and OpenAI are pivoting. The company plans to integrate its own AI assistant, Sparky, into ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, allowing customers to search, compare and build carts through conversation while keeping more control over the transaction experience.
That shift lines up with OpenAI’s broader direction. Rather than acting as a checkout layer, ChatGPT is increasingly focused on product discovery, helping users research, compare and refine purchase decisions before sending them to retailers to complete the sale.
“Shopping can start anywhere now, whether that’s Walmart or a question in ChatGPT,” Daniel Danker, executive vice president of AI acceleration, product and design at Walmart, says in a statement shared with Retail Dive. “Our approach is simple: wherever it begins, customers still get the same personalized Walmart experience, including our assortment, value and speed. With Sparky, we’re bringing our trusted experience into more places.”
By embedding Sparky into external AI tools while continuing to build its own ecosystem, Walmart is betting that the future of shopping will be less about owning the entire journey and more about showing up wherever customers start it.
