Walmart's checkout inside ChatGPT converted three times worse than its own website. It opened the door to AI agents anyway.
By Malin Gaertig · October 12, 2026
Why retailers open or close the door to AI shopping agents depends on where their profit sits, and what that means for the brands on their shelves.
- —Walmart reported lower conversion for checkout inside ChatGPT, but high conversion and repeat rates when outside models sent shoppers to Walmart's own checkout.
- —According to the figures cited, ChatGPT brings Walmart about twice the rate of new customers compared with search engines; Sparky engagement is associated with higher average order value.
- —Amazon restricts outside agents while building an agent layer in which it controls the page, customer data and advertising experience; its stated reasons include customer data and trust.
- —Shopee's ChatGPT discovery and on-platform checkout follow a similar approach to Walmart, suggesting the commercial model matters more than the region.
- —AI agents can choose both the brand to recommend and the retailer to send shoppers to: brands may need to compete for recommendations on open channels and paid visibility on retailer-owned surfaces.
Walmart's product lead told WIRED in March that purchases completed inside ChatGPT converted three times lower than shoppers sent through to Walmart's own site. Six months on, Walmart's US chief executive says the shoppers agents are converting at 'very high rates'. On the other side, you have Amazon who has blocked dozens of outside agents.
Why does Walmart welcome AI shopping agents despite lower in-chat checkout conversion?
Walmart tried selling inside ChatGPT through OpenAI's Instant Checkout. In-chat conversion came in three times lower than click-outs to Walmart's site, and Walmart's Daniel Danker said part of the reason was single-item baskets: shoppers feared they would 'receive five boxes when they actually just want it all in one'.
Rather than dismissing ChatGPT outright, they explored a different avenue. Sparky, its own assistant, now runs inside ChatGPT and Gemini. The agent helps in the discovery, Walmart does the basket and checkout. Walmart's US chief executive David Guggina told the Goldman Sachs consumer conference that the outside models are 'most often choosing to deep link out to us' and that customers arriving from OpenAI and Gemini are 'converting at very high rates' with a very high organic repeat rate.
Three numbers sit behind the commercial case:
Danker told WIRED that ChatGPT brings Walmart about twice the rate of new customers compared with search engines.
Guggina said customers who engage with Sparky see average order value jump 40 per cent, weekly Sparky engagement grew more than 60 per cent quarter on quarter, and visual search lifts conversion 57 per cent over text.
Walmart's US e-commerce sales grew 24 per cent in the second quarter, the tenth straight quarter above 20 per cent.
One of the key differences to Amazon is Walmart’s ad business. Walmart's ad business was $6.4 billion in fiscal 2026, up 46 per cent. That is a fast-growing business, but a young one. A new distribution channel that delivers new customers at no media cost, and then hands them to a checkout Walmart controls, is close to pure upside.
Why does Amazon restrict outside shopping agents while building its own?
Amazon’s ad business generated revenue of $19.8 billion in the second quarter, up 26 per cent, on total net sales of $200.6 billion. That is roughly a tenth of net sales in a single quarter and above $68 billion across 2025. By contrast, Walmart's whole fiscal 2026 advertising line is a third of Amazon's one quarter. Amazon does not report advertising profit separately, but the revenue depends on shoppers browsing its pages and responding to sponsored placements.
Now consider what an outside agent does. It asks the question, scans the options and buys, often without a person ever seeing a sponsored result. Amazon says it blocks agents to protect customer data and a trusted experience. It cut off Meta's Muse in September, saying the agent did not identify itself and appeared to store customer credentials. Meta says Muse cannot access passwords or payment methods. In court, Perplexity argued that Amazon's real motive is protecting ad revenue.
What Amazon is doing is building the agent layer itself. Alexa for Shopping launched on 13 May and was used by more than 350 million customers in the past twelve months. Jassy told investors that shoppers who click a sponsored prompt convert 48 per cent more often and spend 21 per cent more. Amazon is selling advertising inside the conversation. And its Buy for Me agent purchases from other retailers' websites, which some of those retailers criticised because they never opted in.
So the stance is consistent: agents are welcome where Amazon owns the page, the data and the ad.
How does Shopee show that the retail model matters more than the region?
If you work in Singapore, the closest comparison is Shopee, and it behaves like Walmart. Sea and OpenAI announced on 24 June that ChatGPT product discovery is live for Shopee across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Brazil. Users find products in ChatGPT and complete the transaction on Shopee. In the second quarter, Sea's advertising revenue grew more than 70 per cent and Shopee GMV grew 28.4 per cent.
What does AI shopping mean for brands that sell through retailers?
An agent now does two jobs before a shopper reaches any shelf. It decides which brand to recommend and it decides which retailer to send her to. A PYMNTS survey of 2,191 US consumers found 59.7 per cent of their latest AI-assisted purchases closed on Amazon, 19.5 per cent at big-box and department stores and 6.3 per cent on brands' own sites or apps. The brand gets the recommendation. The retailer gets the sale.
Most plausibly, the market sorts into two tracks. Where retailers welcome agents, you compete to be named. Where they do not, you pay for visibility on the retailer's own surface. Your exposure to each depends on how your category sells.