According to Bloomberg and Reuters, the United States retail giant Wal-Mart announced a collaboration with OpenAI, which would allow consumers to view and purchase goods directly from Wal-Mart and Sam’s member stores in ChatGPT, a feature that is expected to be officially online this fall.
By that time, the user ‘ s existing Wal-Mart or Sam member store accounts would automatically be linked to ChatGPT, and some commodities would also be enriched by third-party vendors. Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon stated that this cooperation “lets shopping become a dialogue and allow AI to become a private assistant to consumers”. At the heart of the cooperation is the “Instant Checkout” feature, where users enter in ChatGPT, for example, “Find me an out-of-door dress suitable for autumn trips” and AI not only recommends Wal-Mart stocks, but also shows prices, inventories and user evaluations in real time, adding a key to the shopping cart and paying. This feature is driven by the OpenAI GPT-4o Mini model, which supports voice and text input, integrates Stripe payment protocols and ensures transaction security.
As a typical application of “agent commerce”, users can complete the whole process from demand counselling to the next order of payments through a natural language dialogue, but fresh food is not included in the shopping catalogue for the time being, mainly because consumers usually buy such commodities regularly on a weekly basis, making it difficult to effect instant transformation. In the first half of 2025, Wal-Mart online sales grew by 12 per cent, but still lags behind Amazon-based AI tools such as Rufus Chat Assistants. Cooperation with OpenAI is a continuation of the Wal-Mart “AI priority” strategy – As early as 2024, the company invested $1 billion in the development of an internal AI model, a 700 million-week active user of ChatGPT, the external inter-marriage lending power, with the goal of increasing the electrician penetration rate from 20 to 30 per cent.
For OpenAI, following a payment agreement with Stripe, Wal-Mart worked to shift ChatGPT from a “free tool” to a “pay-in” and expected to contribute $500 million per year through commission and data-sharing.
