From models to agents: A new era of intelligent systems at Walmart  

Announced at Converge 2025, Walmart’s flagship retail technology event, new agentic capabilities mark a major milestone in our AI journey.

We’re entering a pivotal moment in the evolution of AI, where the focus is shifting from model-centric development to building intelligent systems powered by agents capable of autonomous reasoning, planning and action. This transition to agentic AI is more than just a technical upgrade; it’s a fundamental reimagining of how we build, scale, and deliver intelligent experiences across Walmart.  

These capabilities represent a key step in Walmart’s ongoing transformation—where AI, automation, and data intelligence are redefining how retail operates at scale. At the foundation of this transformation is Element, our proprietary ML platform, and the launch of four super agents—including WIBEY, a developer-focused agent that serves as a unified entry point for intelligent action across Walmart’s systems, available starting next week. 

Element: Built for intelligent workflows 

As part of this transformation, Walmart is rearchitecting its technology foundation to support intelligent speed, enabling systems to do more than just reactive, but to be predictive and purposeful.  

Element is purpose-built to support the full lifecycle of intelligent workflows, from experimentation to production at scale. Designed for distributed, scalable, and production-ready AI, Element simplifies infrastructure, accelerates development, and empowers teams to focus on delivering impact.  

Through a shared, integrated framework, Element empowers developers, data scientists, and business teams to: 

• Discover and reuse existing models 
• Prepare data consistently 
• Build, test, and deploy new models rapidly and responsibly, meeting compliance and governance standards 

Further, by leveraging Kubernetes and a robust MLOps framework, Element supports multi-cloud deployment, GPU-accelerated experimentation, and seamless integration with enterprise services.  

Today’s intelligent agents are more than just models—they’re systems that reason, remember, and act, requiring inference, memory, and orchestration to operate effectively. To support this complexity, Element has introduced a suite of new capabilities designed specifically for agent-based intelligence: 

• Stateful architecture that tracks what agents say, do, and aim to achieve—managing both short-term and long-term memory. 
• Agent-aware pipelines that propagate context and retrieve relevant information at the right time. 
• Tool calling and plugin ecosystems that allow agents to interact with external systems and services natively. 
• Standardized communication protocols to ensure seamless coordination between agents and other entities. 
• API orchestration that enables agents to perform complex tasks across distributed systems.

Element also provides deep observability into agent behavior, including decision paths, reasoning steps, and tool usage. Teams can define, monitor and measure custom metrics and dynamic behaviors, to continuously improve intelligent systems. 

Its advanced hyperparameter tuning allows for parallel experimentation, speeding up model iteration and deployment. Teams can deploy and monitor models across clouds and regions, integrate with enterprise services, and innovate without friction. 

As agents shift from static capabilities to dynamic behaviors, Element ensures they remain observable, measurable, and adaptable—supporting the next generation of intelligent systems. 

WIBEY: Turning intent into intelligent action 

Built on Element, WIBEY is not a dashboard or portal—it’s an invocation layer that interprets developer intent and orchestrates execution across Walmart’s agentic ecosystem.  It abstracts complexity and connects systems through clean prompts, shared context, and intelligent delegation. 

WIBEY exemplifies how intelligent agents are changing the way work happens, making systems more intuitive, responsive, and aligned with the pace of modern retail. With it, a single prompt can scaffold a service, resolve a compliance issue, or fix a pipeline—without needing to know which system handles what. It transforms fragmented workflows into coordinated systems by:

• Embedding directly into developer tools.
• Routing intelligently across domains.
• Supporting decentralized agent contribution via shared contracts.

WIBEY also supports two distinct types of users:

• Builders including developers, engineers, and other technologists who create agents, APIs, and intelligent workflows.
• Non-builders comprising technical program managers, product managers, and others who interact with those agents to get work done.

WIBEY isn’t just a developer tool—it’s a system interface for anyone building, deploying, or operating technology at Walmart.

What makes WIBEY especially powerful is its ability to augment existing workflows. It doesn’t ask teams to change how they work—it meets users where they are and understands their intent. Whether in Slack, CLI, Visual Studio, or another interface, WIBEY integrates seamlessly. It’s not disruptive—it’s additive.

To support intelligent orchestration at scale, WIBEY is built on a federated model. Domain teams own their agents, while WIBEY ensures they’re discoverable, interoperable, and reliable. Protocols like MCP (for discovery and access) and A2A (for delegation and chaining) provide the connective tissue that enables seamless orchestration across domains. 

This marks a fundamental shift in how software is built and operated. WIBEY enables teams to give agency to agents by delegating predictable tasks to agents, while maintaining governance and oversight that balance agency and control across the system. 

Building a better Walmart

The shift to agentic AI isn't just a technical evolution, it’s a new way of building. Platforms like Element and agents like WIBEY are helping us reimagine how we develop, how we deliver, and how we scale innovation across Walmart. 

By equipping developers with powerful tools like Element and WIBEY, we’re unlocking faster execution, greater autonomy, and a new standard for intelligent system design across Walmart. As we embrace agentic AI, we’re building a smarter Walmart—one that sets new standards for speed, precision, and service, and where intelligent systems work alongside us.