Walmart’s latest AI move adds ChatGPT-powered buying to its roster of digital shopping tools.

The Bentonville-based retailer, which operates about 140 locations in Dallas-Fort Worth, announced a new partnership with OpenAI today that will soon let customers shop Walmart directly through ChatGPT using Instant Checkout. Whether they’re meal planning, restocking household essentials, or discovering something new, customers can simply ask and buy, the company said.

The ChatGPT shopping feature, which rolled out with Etsy and Shopify in September, lets customers buy directly from participating retailers through Instant Checkout, according to trade publication Retail Dive. The OpenAI tool currently supports single-item purchases, with plans to expand to multi-item carts. As a payment partner, Stripe processes the credit card transactions.

Walmart customers would link their Walmart and Sam’s Club accounts to ChatGPT to enable the conversational shopping experience. 

Walmart’s AI-first shopping bet broadens—from “Ask Sparky” to Instant Checkout

The new OpenAI partnership builds on Walmart’s broader push to reimagine how customers discover and buy products.

“For many years now, eCommerce shopping experiences have consisted of a search bar and a long list of item responses. That is about to change,” said Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. “We are running towards that more enjoyable and convenient future with Sparky and through partnerships, including this important step with OpenAI.”

Walmart calls it “agentic commerce in action.” With the shift from reactive shopping to AI-driven prediction and planning, the retail giant aims to anticipate customer needs before they know them.

Walmart’s shopping assistant Sparky, which was announced in June, is separate from the Instant Checkout feature in ChatGPT.  Both leverage generative AI technology, but  AI-powered Sparky enhances the shopping experience within Walmart’s own app. Customer access it via the “Ask Sparky” button in the Walmart app. Open AI’s Instant Checkout is more of a purchasing shortcut from within ChatGPT.

‘We’re in the early stages’

Locally, the announcement sparked thoughtful reactions from North Texas tech and marketing leaders.

“We’re in the early stages of LLM-driven e-commerce experiences,” said Austin Shockley, a UX and branding expert based in Dallas, on LinkedIn. “With Shopify and Walmart onboard, we should eventually get some data to see whether it’s working.”

Shockley sees an open question in whether consumers will actually embrace chat-based shopping. “A lot of people in tech see our current chat-based interfaces as a big regression in many aspects of the user experience. But it’s still early,” he noted.

Michael Sitarzewski, VP of Innovation and Technology at Tandem Theory in Dallas, has his own takeaway.

“It’s becoming more evident that OpenAI’s footprint in our daily lives is quickly surpassing what even Apple and Google have been able to accomplish,” he said on LinkedIn. “Most things they (Apple and Google) know about you are inferred by actions you take. OpenAI’s data is based on your confidential thought stream and patterns. It’s far more intimate—fed with real data, data you provide.”

A new brand awareness battleground

Elsewhere, marketers and commerce analysts are framing Walmart’s announcement as part of a broader shift in how product discovery works. In a recent Digiday story, experts said AI-powered conversations are fast becoming a new battleground for brand awareness, shifting discovery away from traditional search engines and marketplaces.

“It’s like Google and SEO all over again,” said Colo.-based Martin Kristiseter, CEO of performance marketing firm Digital Remedy. “How do you basically trick the system to make sure [your brand] shows up?”

Other marketers remain skeptical, according to Digiday. They question how ChatGPT ranks products, how much data brands will be able to access, and whether enough consumers will start their shopping journeys inside chatbots to make it worth the investment. But, as the publication put it, “there’s a bigger fear of missing out and being late to the AI hype train than there is expectations around incremental growth.”

Despite that, agency leaders said interest is high. “Right now, there’s just curiosity across the board,” said Calif.-based Simon Poulton, EVP of innovation and growth at Tinuiti, on Digiday. “A lot of folks are, frankly, just keeping up with drinking the fire hoses as they’re going.”

AI training and problem-solving

Walmart said it’s already using AI in multiple parts of its business, from trimming 18 weeks off fashion production timelines to cutting customer care resolution times by 40%. The company is also rolling out ChatGPT Enterprise to teams and promoting AI literacy with OpenAI certifications to employees across the organization. 

Walmart is the largest retail property owner in Dallas-Fort Worth, according to the Dallas Business Journal. Its footprint in the region includes 96 Supercenters and 44 Neighborhood Markets. 

The company also operates a three-story automated fulfillment center in Lancaster, which uses AI-powered robotics to ship “hundreds of thousands of orders a day.”

This report was updated on Oct. 15, 2025, at 11:06 a.m. with additional details about Walmart’s AI-powered “Ask Sparky.”

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