Walmart's Open AI Agent Sparky Challenges Amazon's E-Commerce Dominance

Amazon began testing Rufus in the United States and Britain in 2024 before expanding it nationwide in the United States in 2025, capturing shopping demand within the closed ecosystems of the Amazon app and Prime. Rufus had more than 250 million users by early 2026. Walmart, by contrast, has positioned Sparky as an open, cross-platform AI agent, shifting the focus of competition from traffic on a single e-commerce platform to control over the gateway to transactions.

Walmart unveiled Sparky on June 6, 2025, and announced at the National Retail Federation's U.S. conference in early 2026 that it was working with Google on a universal commerce protocol. The value of the partnership was not disclosed. Walmart's February 2026 earnings report showed that third-party AI recommendations accounted for 20% of new online traffic. The system processes 50 billion data points each week, while retention among users of automated replenishment was 35% higher than among regular members.