Walmart

Walmart is listed as a co-developer of the Universal Commerce Protocol, the open-source standard (Apache 2.0) that Sundar Pichai launched at NRF 2026 in New York on 11 January, alongside Shopify, Target, Etsy and Wayfair. The Walmart-Google partnership served as the worked example of what the protocol buys: real-time inventory, delivery in as little as 30 minutes, automatic application of Walmart+ benefits.

That is one of three protocols. Olivier Rafal, writing on 22 October 2025 about ChatGPT Atlas, noted that Walmart and Etsy already offered purchases through the Agentic Commerce Protocol in the United States, a capability Atlas itself had not yet implemented. On 6 October 2026, Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor put Walmart among the companies building the Personal Agent Protocol with Meta and Sierra, next to Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify and Stripe.

So the same retailer sits inside standards that overlap and, in the UCP versus Stripe and commercetools' Agentic Commerce Suite split described at NRF, compete. The NRF document frames the stakes for anyone who stays out: structural disintermediation, as agents steer consumers toward the technically integrated chains. Meanwhile 24% of consumers say they trust AI to make purchases for them.

A fourth appearance has nothing to do with checkout. Josh Bersin counts Walmart with SAP, Microsoft and L'Oreal among companies that redesigned their leadership models for AI, in a piece whose thesis puts work, jobs and people at the centre of AI transformation.