Walls and Bridges: Amazon and Walmart's Defining Choice at the AI Crossroads

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As the tide of artificial intelligence crashes upon the shores of global commerce with unprecedented force, every corporate giant must answer a question that will define its future: Do you embrace it, resist it, or forge a new path entirely? In this technological revolution, known as Generative AI, the two titans of global retail—Amazon and Walmart—have, at almost the exact same moment, delivered two diametrically opposed answers.

Amazon has chosen a defensive posture of “building walls,” tightening the floodgates on its own data in an attempt to contain the variables of the AI era within its familiar commercial empire. Walmart, meanwhile, has done the exact opposite, adopting an open strategy of “building bridges.” It not only welcomes the arrival of AI but is actively re-engineering itself to better connect with the AI ecosystems of the future.

One is fortifying its castle; the other is striving to become the main port of a new continent. This is not a simple divergence in technical roadmaps but a profound strategic gamble on the future. It is a bet on who will ultimately hold the core levers of power in the retail industry ten or twenty years from now. To grasp the full significance of this wager, we must return to the most fundamental question of all: If the shopping journey of the future no longer begins with us opening an app or a website to "search," but with a simple sentence spoken to an ever-present AI assistant, who will control the entire process from "I want to buy" to "I have bought"?

The answer to this question will redraw the map of power in the retail world. The choices made by Amazon and Walmart represent two profoundly different logics of survival and growth, each centered on its own vision of that answer.

I. Amazon's Imperial Defense—Control as a Core Instinct

To understand why Amazon is so wary of external AI, you must first understand how its commercial empire was built. The story of Amazon's success is, at its core, a story of control. Starting as an online bookstore, it methodically extended its reach into every single link of the retail chain, seizing firm control along the way.

• It controls the products. Through its first-party and third-party marketplace, it possesses the world's most enormous catalog of goods.
• It controls the logistics. With Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and its proprietary delivery network, it has defined the service standards of "next-day" and even "same-day" delivery.
• It controls the payment. Amazon Pay makes the transaction loop incredibly seamless.
• But its most crucial form of control is over the "entry point to traffic" and "user decision-making."

Picture the conventional shopping process: when we want to buy a coffee maker, the first instinct for most of us is to open the Amazon app or website and type "coffee maker" into the search bar. Everything that happens next is part of Amazon's carefully crafted script. The first thing that meets your eye is a list of products, meticulously ranked for you by a complex algorithm. Which product appears on the first page, and which one gets a more prominent position, is determined by enormous advertising fees and a sophisticated bidding system. To gain visibility, merchants must pay Amazon for ads. Every "Sponsored" tag you see is a stream flowing into Amazon's vast river of revenue.

You click on products, browse details, read reviews, and make comparisons. Every second you spend on this path, designed by Amazon, contributes value to its business model. Ultimately, you place an order, and Amazon not only takes a commission from the sale but has also profited from the ad placements you saw earlier. This path, from "search" to "conversion," is the deepest moat around Amazon's empire and the heart of its profitability.

Now, generative AI arrives as an uninvited "wall-smasher," attempting to drive a wedge into the very start of this path.

AI assistants make shopping deceptively simple. You no longer need to rack your brain for the right keywords in a search box. You just tell it, in plain language: "I want to buy a coffee maker that's easy to use, quiet, and simple to clean, with a budget of around $150." The AI will instantly understand your intent and directly recommend a few products that best fit your criteria, perhaps even with price comparisons from different platforms and a one-click purchase link.

For the user, this process is the pinnacle of convenience. For Amazon, it is an existential threat. It directly "swallows" the very segment of the business that Amazon is proudest of and profits most from: search and discovery. When users bypass Amazon's search bar, Amazon's advertising system, ranking algorithms, and conversion funnels are rendered useless. It risks being demoted from a sovereign ruler of commerce to a mere "warehouse keeper" responsible only for the final shipment. This erosion of control over the transaction chain is something Amazon simply cannot tolerate.

Therefore, Amazon's move in July 2025 to block AI crawlers from Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity from accessing its product data becomes perfectly logical. It is an almost instinctual defensive reaction. The subtext is clear: "You want to scrape my product information to train your models? Not a chance. You want to bypass my platform to facilitate transactions directly? Don't even think about it."

Amazon's confidence to "build walls" stems from the powerful user inertia it has cultivated over many years. In several key global markets, Amazon commands a near-monopolistic market share. Hundreds of millions of users have been conditioned to think, "If I need to buy something, I go to Amazon." This deep-seated brand recognition and ingrained user habit is its greatest asset against the AI disruption. It is betting that, no matter how intelligent AI becomes, the final step of completing a purchase will, for the foreseeable future, still take place within the familiar confines of the Amazon app.

So, Amazon's strategy can be seen as a "delaying action" or a "siege defense." It is leveraging its current advantages to buy itself time—time to observe, understand, and ultimately find its own place in the AI era. As long as the final "checkout" and "delivery" stages remain in its hands, it remains the most powerful player at the table.

However, history has repeatedly taught us that the entry points to commerce are never permanent. Portals were replaced by search engines, which in turn were challenged by social media and recommendation feeds. Today, conversational AI is emerging as the next potential super-gateway. Amazon's walls may be high, but while they can defend the present, they may not be able to defend against a future that has been completely reshaped by AI. When the tide of user habits truly turns, even the highest walls can be bypassed or submerged.

II. Walmart's Interface Evolution—Proactive Adaptation over Passive Reaction

Turning our attention to the other protagonist, Walmart, we see a completely different picture. If Amazon's strategy is to "guard the gates," Walmart's is to "integrate with everything." It has chosen a path that is the polar opposite of Amazon's: not to block AI, but to make itself the easiest and most preferred partner for AI to work with.

This strategic choice is also rooted in Walmart's corporate DNA. Walmart's core strength has never been in online traffic algorithms or ad monetization. It lies in its unparalleled network of physical stores and its supply chain prowess. Its slogan is "Save Money. Live Better." and its power comes from the thousands of stores embedded in communities and the hyper-efficient logistics system that masters the "last three miles" of delivery.

A look at the numbers makes this distinction stark: in 2024, Walmart's advertising business generated about $4.4 billion in revenue, while its total revenue was a staggering $648.1 billion. Advertising accounted for a mere 0.7% of its total income. This is a world away from Amazon's model, where advertising is a core profit engine. Simply put, Walmart doesn't make its money by charging a "toll" at the entrance; it makes money by actually selling each and every item.

This fundamentally shapes its more open-minded stance toward AI. It doesn't fear losing control over the "traffic entry point" because it never held it with the same iron grip as Amazon. Instead, it sees a massive opportunity: if AI becomes the new "coordinator" and "advisor" for shopping, then whoever can provide the AI with the most accurate, real-time, and reliable information on products and fulfillment will win the AI's favor—and thus, win the final order.

When an AI assistant recommends products to a user, what does it care about most? Not flashy ad copy, but the hard facts: Is this item in stock? What is the price? How quickly can it be delivered? Is it easy to return?

This is precisely where Walmart excels. Its core competencies are the precise, real-time management of vast physical inventory and a robust local fulfillment capability. Walmart realized that if it could structure and standardize this data into an "interface" that AI could easily read and call upon, then AI would naturally direct orders its way.

And so, we see a series of proactive moves from Walmart. It not only optimized its website for AI crawlers but also launched its own family of AI agents. The consumer-facing AI assistant was named "Sparky."

It is crucial to understand that Sparky is far more than just a "Walmart version of Siri." From its inception, Walmart did not design Sparky to be a closed-off chatbot within its own app. It was envisioned as an open "AI liaison" or a "data translator."

Let's imagine a future shopping scenario:

You say to your personal AI assistant on your phone (it could be Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Copilot, or any AI you prefer): "Help me get a shopping list for tonight's party: chips, soda, ice cream, and some fruit. I need it delivered within half an hour."

Upon receiving this command, your personal AI won't go searching on e-commerce sites one by one. It will act like a smart butler, sending out a "request for quotation" to all retailer AIs across the web: "Who has these items in stock and can deliver to this address within 30 minutes?"

At this moment, Walmart's Sparky would immediately step forward, responding fluently in a language that other AIs understand: "I have all those items. Chip brand A is $2.50, brand B is $3.00; a case of soda is $12; Häagen-Dazs is currently 20% off; the fruit arrived fresh this morning. Based on your address, I can complete the delivery in 25 minutes from a nearby store. Here is the total price and an order link. Shall I confirm?"

In this entire process, you, the user, never even opened the Walmart app. Your personal AI and Walmart's Sparky completed the information exchange and transaction behind the scenes. Walmart transformed itself from a "destination" that users must actively visit into a "functional plug-in" or a "service interface" that can be called upon by any AI system at any time.

This strategy is backed by a profound insight: Walmart believes the focal point of future business competition will shift from "capturing user attention" to "earning AI's recommendation." What it is doing is, in essence, meticulously "submitting its resume to AI." On that resume, it reads: I have the most comprehensive inventory of daily goods, the densest network of physical stores, the fastest local delivery service, and my data interface is clear, stable, and reliable. All AIs are welcome to connect with me; I will ensure you and your users are satisfied.

Walmart's calculation is crystal clear: it doesn't care where the shopping journey begins. It only cares where the final checkout happens. As long as it can become the top choice on an AI's shopping list, it will thrive in the new era of retail.

III. The Demise and Reconstruction of the Entry Point—Who Will Define the Future Path to Purchase?

Amazon's defense and Walmart's openness—two strategies that seem irreconcilable—are ultimately both answers to the same question of our time: in a world of consumption dominated by AI, is the "entry point" still as valuable as it used to be?

The answer is complex: the form of the entry point is changing, and its value is being re-segmented and redefined.

An analytical framework proposed by the market research firm eMarketer brilliantly illustrates how AI will progressively "unbundle" the value chain of traditional e-commerce. We can use it to understand the three stages of this battle for the entry point:

Stage 1: "AI as a Recommendation Outsource" (The Search & Discovery Layer)

In this initial stage, AI assistants primarily act as tools for information discovery and product recommendation. For example, you ask ChatGPT which running shoes are best for long distances, and it provides suggestions along with links to Amazon or the brand's official website. Ultimately, you still have to navigate to these sites to browse, pay, and await delivery.

At this stage, AI has merely placed itself in front of the e-commerce platform's "entry point," but the core components of the transaction, data, and customer relationship remain in the platform's hands. Amazon's moat, though challenged, is not yet fundamentally breached.

Stage 2: "AI as an Affiliate Settlement Layer" (The Conversion Layer is Unbundled)

In this next stage, AI's capabilities expand significantly. It is no longer just a recommender but is deeply integrated with merchants' systems via APIs. After the AI recommends a product, you can complete the payment directly within the chat interface, without any need to jump to another site. The AI has captured the most valuable part of the chain, from "recommendation" to "conversion."

At this point, the function of traditional e-commerce platforms is further diminished, making them look more like pure "fulfillment centers." Their role is reduced to managing inventory and shipping goods. The advertising budgets once spent on platforms will migrate en masse to the AI assistant's ecosystem. The profit margins of platforms will be severely squeezed. Walmart's Sparky strategy is a direct preparation for this stage, ensuring it becomes the "fulfillment center" that can be seamlessly integrated by AI.

Stage 3: "The AI-Native Marketplace" (The Full Chain is Reconstructed)

This is the final form that eMarketer considers the greatest threat to traditional retailers. At this stage, AI assistants will no longer be content acting as intermediaries. Instead, they will partner directly with brands and logistics providers to build a completely new, end-to-end retail ecosystem.

From sparking your purchase intent and providing personalized recommendations to processing payments and coordinating delivery, the entire process takes place within the AI's ecosystem. The user never needs to interact with a traditional e-commerce platform at all. The AI now controls not only recommendation and conversion but also fulfillment and, most importantly, the "customer relationship." At that point, traditional platforms face the risk of being completely marginalized or even rendered obsolete.

Conclusion: A Tale of Different Futures

Looking back at the choices of Amazon and Walmart, the picture becomes much clearer.

Amazon's "wall-building" is an all-out effort to defend its dominant position in Stage 1 and Stage 2. It possesses the most complete "search-convert-fulfill" loop, and it must protect the integrity and value of this chain. But its greatest risk lies in the fact that it is a "final destination"; its greatest fear is a permanent migration of the starting point of the customer journey.

Walmart's "bridge-building" is a proactive maneuver to position itself for Stage 2 and Stage 3. It knows it is not the final destination online, and if it remains static, it risks being cut off by the upstream flow of AI. So, it chooses to walk toward AI, transforming itself into the most indispensable "interface" and "infrastructure" of the new commercial path. It does not seek to control the path, but to become an essential part of it.

Neither of these paths is definitively right or wrong. They are simply the most rational choices made by two companies based on their distinct histories, unique strengths, and different visions of the future.

The retail revolution sparked by generative AI has only just begun. It concerns not only the fate of two giants but also heralds a profound transformation in how every one of us consumes. In the past, we were the ones who actively sought information. In the future, we may only need to express our intent, and an omnipresent AI will handle the rest. In this redistribution of power, whoever can best understand and serve the user's "intent" will win the future. And with their actions, Amazon and Walmart have already placed their first bets.