Walmart announced six new holiday capabilities for Sparky, its AI shopping agent. Shoppers can photograph a handwritten list or export one from the Notes app to build a cart, upload a photo of a problem such as a stained tablecloth for product recommendations, and have Sparky generate recipes around a budget and dietary needs before adding the ingredients to the cart. A Shop to Light feature pins an item on the store map and lights up its shelf label when the shopper taps "Flash price tag."
Walmart said Sparky is available to its U.S. customers and is scaling to Canada, Mexico and Sam's Club members in the U.S., with Spanish and French support also in Mexico and Canada. Voice capabilities are expected to launch chainwide by the end of the year, Walmart said.
On the business side, PYMNTS cited a Procurement Magazine account of the closing session at Amazon Business's October conference in Nashville. Céline Vuillequez, vice president of Amazon Business Europe, named four essentials for purchasing agents: spending limits, company policies built into systems, human approval above the limits and a complete record of agents' actions, the report said.
Matt Yanchyshyn, vice president of AWS Marketplace and Partner Services, said AWS Marketplace's agent mode doubled conversion from around 3% to 6%, per the report, and predicted agentic payments at scale in 2027, including routine renewals handled without human intervention. PYMNTS noted the figure concerns AWS Marketplace rather than Amazon Business purchasing broadly.