eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Walmart is revamping how artificial intelligence supports its business by replacing dozens of standalone AI tools with four integrated “super agents” aimed at enhancing the experience for customers, employees, engineers, and suppliers.
After deploying numerous AI agents across different platforms and use cases, the retail giant found the structure had grown overly complex for end users. In response, Walmart is centralizing these agents into fewer, multifunctional systems to make navigation more intuitive and efficient.
Walmart’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer, Suresh Kumar, told The Wall Street Journal, “It became very clear that we could dramatically simplify. If I have an agent that helps you with your payroll and I have a different agent that helps you with identifying merchandising trends, you shouldn’t have to remember that and switch between those two.”
Rather than requiring users to toggle between multiple tools, each group — customers, associates, engineers, and suppliers — will now use a single AI assistant designed to handle a broad set of needs by tapping into multiple back-end capabilities.
Meet Walmart’s four super agents
- Sparky (customer agent) helps shoppers with product recommendations, reviews, and eventually event planning and reordering. This agent is live.
- Marty (supplier agent) will assist suppliers with inventory analytics and even suggest advertising campaigns. This agent is launching soon.
- Associate (employee agent) will assist workers with tasks such as replacing lost discount cards or answering benefits-related questions. This agent is expected in 2026.
- Engineering agent will assist Walmart employees with routine HR tasks such as replacing lost discount cards or finding answers to benefits-related questions. This agent is set for release next year.
Each of these super agents serves as a centralized interface powered by multiple task-specific AI tools operating behind the scenes. The system is designed to streamline access to AI services across Walmart’s ecosystem while improving performance and user satisfaction.
Leadership endorsement and strategy
Walmart CEO and President Doug McMillon wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company has been developing AI agents over the past several months to “make work easier, faster, and more impactful.”
“Now, we’re connecting them through a unified agentic framework, so they can work together to support customers and members, associates, and sellers and suppliers in powerful new ways,” McMillon added.
To achieve this, Walmart is implementing the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open-source standard introduced by AI company Anthropic. MCP enables the agents to communicate with one another and integrate with Walmart’s broader systems, apps, and databases in real time.
“When we first started building agents, MCP wasn’t super widespread,” Kumar told WSJ. “Now we’re going back and making sure older agents conform with the standard.”
To accelerate its AI development, Walmart recently appointed Daniel Danker, a former Instacart executive, as head of global AI acceleration for product and design. The company is also recruiting an AI platforms leader to oversee the tech integration.
McMillon emphasized that AI is transforming Walmart at every level. “Artificial intelligence is already changing how we work,” he said in a separate LinkedIn post. “Learning and applying what we learn, as we build new tools, is the responsibility and an opportunity for all of us.”
A bold pivot from computer vision to full-bodied autonomy: See how RealSense’s AI play is reshaping its place in the robotics industry — and Intel’s legacy in innovation.