The retail landscape is officially closer to 2050 than it is 2000. That is redefining the traditional roles of Amazon and Walmart as both seek to compete, win, and push the boundaries of innovation across retail and commerce.
For example, one major retailer this week announced a new 229,000-square-foot megastore designed to combine groceries and general merchandise, effectively merging elements of a supermarket, a big-box retailer and a showroom.
The other major retailer announced its embrace of a new standard for agentic artificial intelligence (AI) commerce, enabling shoppers to eliminate the friction between want and buy by allowing them to browse, personalize, and complete purchases directly through conversational AI.
While the first retailer may sound like brick-and-mortar behemoth Walmart, it was actually Amazon. And while the second retailer might sound like it’s doing something the eCommerce giant Amazon would do, it was actually Walmart.
The result was a kind of role reversal. Walmart positioned itself as a collaborator, aligning with Google on agentic shopping standards, while Amazon either declined to join that effort in order to build its own agentic infrastructure, or was not invited to participate. At the same time, Amazon signaled that physical retail is not a relic of the past but a platform for the future.
Taken together, the moves illustrate two competing theories of how the next era of commerce will be built: through shared standards and partnerships, or through tightly integrated systems that favor speed and control over interoperability.
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Read also: Does Google’s Agentic Partnership With Walmart Signal the End of Click-and-Buy Retail?
Walmart’s Week Was Defined by Standard-Setting as Strategy
For Walmart, the headline this week was not a single product or service, but a posture. By joining forces with Google on universal commerce protocol standards for agentic shopping, Walmart effectively declared that the future of retail artificial intelligence should be interoperable. The premise behind agentic shopping is straightforward: autonomous or semi-autonomous AI agents that can search, compare, and transact on behalf of consumers. The complexity lies in how those agents communicate with retailers’ systems, access inventory, and execute transactions securely.
In her thought leadership series, “What 2026 Will Make Obvious: Ten Structural Shifts Reshaping Payments, Commerce and the AI Economy,” PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster said of agentic commerce: “Smart agents take the work of searching, comparing, and deciding out of the consumer’s hands and give it to software instructed to act in the consumer’s interest. That changes everything: how retailers compete, how platforms monetize, and how buying decisions are made.”
She separately wrote, “enough organizations crossed the line from experimentation to use that the argument about whether AI is ‘real’ has largely been resolved.”
Walmart’s decision to participate in a shared standard suggests a belief that scale in the AI era will come from being easy to plug into, not from building the most elegant closed system. In a standardized agentic environment, Walmart is likely to be one of the easiest retailers for agents to work with. Smaller competitors may struggle to comply with the technical and operational requirements, reinforcing Walmart’s advantage.
Walmart’s expansion of drone delivery this week fits into that same logic. While drone delivery has been discussed in retail circles for nearly a decade, it has often felt more like a branding exercise than an operational reality. Walmart’s approach has been different in its emphasis on incremental scaling and integration with existing stores.
Read more: Walmart’s Closing the Amazon Online Sales Gap
Amazon Gets Physical and Goes Frictionless
Against its rival’s backdrop of digital strategy, Amazon’s announcement of a new megastore in Chicago landed with particular force for a company that once appeared ambivalent about brick-and-mortar.
The size alone matters. At 229,000 square feet, the store is not an experiment; it is a platform. It suggests that Amazon sees physical retail as a critical interface for its ecosystem, not just a complement to eCommerce. Physical stores offer immediacy, sensory engagement and local presence that even the best digital experiences struggle to replicate. They also serve as fulfillment hubs, returns centers and data collection points.
In Chicago, a dense urban market with diverse demographics, Amazon will have an opportunity to test how its digital advantages translate into physical space.
But perhaps the most intriguing Amazon announcement of the week was not the store itself, but the introduction of portable “Just Walk Out” checkout kiosks. These self-contained systems can reportedly be deployed in hours at events, pop-up shops, or temporary venues, enabling cashierless transactions without permanent infrastructure.
In addition to third-party retail locations such as stadiums, Amazon said it is also adding Just Walk Out technology to its own operations, including more than 40 Just Walk Out-enabled stores at Amazon fulfillment centers, with more slated to go live this year.
It also reinforces Amazon’s preference for proprietary systems. Just Walk Out is not a standard; it is a service.
At the same time, Amazon is reportedly challenging luxury retailer Saks Global’s bankruptcy filing. The eCommerce giant accuses the company of breaking an agreement on the sale of Saks products on its website.
Amazon is also reportedly seeking reduced prices of up to 30% from its suppliers as it deals with tariffs.
The Competitive Implications
The near-term competitive implications of this week’s developments are subtle but significant. Walmart’s alignment with Google may accelerate the emergence of third-party shopping agents that treat retailers more like interchangeable endpoints. If that happens, price, availability, and delivery speed will matter more than brand loyalty. Walmart is well-positioned for that kind of competition.
Amazon’s approach, meanwhile, seeks to make brand loyalty almost invisible by embedding commerce into everyday life through agents, devices, and physical spaces. The Chicago store and portable kiosks are physical manifestations of that ambition. They are touchpoints that reinforce the Amazon experience, even as the company builds the digital intelligence behind the scenes.
Over time, the two strategies may converge in unexpected ways. Amazon may find it necessary to support certain standards to avoid exclusion from broader ecosystems. Walmart may develop more proprietary layers to differentiate its offerings. For now, however, the contrast is sharp enough to offer a glimpse into the strategic choices that will define retail over the next decade.
