Walmart AI agents are about to get official shopping access. Walmart unveiled tools on Wednesday, Oct 21, 2026, that let AI agents such as Meta’s Muse shop on behalf of its customers. The retailer plans to launch “Agent Profiles” within the next month, letting customers register each AI assistant as a separate profile inside their Walmart account.
Customers stay in control of the spending. They can require approval for every purchase, or they can let an agent buy on its own up to a limit they set: $50, $100 or $200. Profiles can be deleted at any time. Walmart compared the setup to adding an authorized user to a credit card.
The credit-card comparison is deliberate. Adding an authorized user to a credit card gives someone bounded spending power on your account, and Walmart AI agents work the same way: the customer sets the boundary, the agent operates inside it, and the customer can end the arrangement at any time.
Walmart AI agents get their own account profiles
Each AI assistant is registered as its own profile within the customer’s Walmart account. That keeps the agent’s activity separate from the customer’s own orders and makes it simple to revoke access later.
The profile model is built around permission. A customer decides which assistant gets a profile, what it is allowed to spend, and whether each order needs a manual sign-off. Deleting the profile ends the assistant’s access to the account.
Walmart AI agents take the opposite approach from Amazon
Walmart’s move runs counter to Amazon’s stance. Amazon bars outside AI agents from its store: last month it blocked Meta’s Muse, and in November 2025 it sued Perplexity over that company’s Comet browser agent.
Amazon is pushing its own shopping tools instead, including Alexa for Shopping and its Buy for Me feature. The result is a split in retail: Walmart opening its doors to outside agents while Amazon keeps them out.
The November 2025 lawsuit against Perplexity targeted its Comet browser agent, which Amazon said violated its rules. Walmart AI agents face no such barrier at Walmart, which is positioning openness as a differentiator while its rival litigates.
The contrast is sharp because the same agent sits on both sides of it. Meta’s Muse, which Walmart named as an example of the assistants its customers can register, is the agent Amazon blocked last month.
Walmart AI agents join the multistep shopping race
AI agents carry out multistep tasks on a user’s behalf: searching, comparing and purchasing. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Meta are all investing heavily in the technology, and shopping is one of the first consumer uses taking shape.
A shopping agent strings together steps a person would otherwise do by hand. Walmart AI agents can search the catalog, compare options and complete the purchase, compressing a routine that used to take several sessions into a single instruction.
Meta’s Muse launched in September and is available only in the US and Canada. Sensor Tower analysis puts its downloads above 10 million, a fast start for an assistant that is barely two months old.
Walmart named Meta’s Muse as the example assistant, and the choice matters: the agent launched in September, runs only in the US and Canada, and has passed 10 million downloads per Sensor Tower. Walmart AI agents will therefore start with an assistant that already has a large American user base.
The spending caps show where Walmart thinks the trust boundary sits. A $50 limit covers routine restocking, while $100 or $200 gives the agent room for larger baskets, all without asking the customer to approve each item. Customers who want tighter control can require approval on every purchase instead.
Agent Profiles are due within the next month. Customers will be able to set the $50, $100 or $200 spending cap, or require approval on every order, when they register an assistant.
The launch will test whether shoppers trust Walmart AI agents with their wallets. The spending caps and per-order approvals are Walmart’s opening answer to that question.