Amazon and Walmart See Intent as 2026’s Holy Grail

Among retail’s most dominant themes in 2025 was that the next era of competition is about ecosystem control, not just operational excellence.

As 2026 approaches, Walmart and Amazon are focused on building monetization layers that sit on top of commerce: advertising, data, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven services, subscriptions and media-like distribution surfaces. The goal is not simply growth, but control of demand, attention and the economics surrounding transactions they may not even directly fulfill.

But despite their convergence, Amazon and Walmart are not pursuing identical paths. Where Walmart monetizes proximity, Amazon monetizes presence.

These differences matter because they shape where each company can credibly expand next. Walmart is well positioned to turn stores into experiential hubs that blur the line between shopping and media. Amazon is better positioned to abstract commerce entirely, embedding it invisibly into content, AI interactions and ambient computing environments.

The throughline of this week’s news was preparation for the year ahead. Amazon and Walmart are positioning themselves for a future in which retail margins remain under pressure, consumer behavior fragments further and AI reshapes how demand is created and captured.

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Ecosystem Control as the New Competitive Moat

Among the biggest headline this week was the report Wednesday (Dec. 17) that Amazon has reshuffled senior leadership of its artificial general intelligence (AGI) work, pulling AI models, custom silicon and quantum computing into a single organization led by AWS veteran Peter DeSantis. The shift comes after AWS re:Invent recently showcased new Nova models and Trainium chips. Analysts have reacted positively to news of Amazon’s evolving AI ambitions, with Bank of America citing an “agent-driven” enterprise future.

The AI leadership shakeup points to a company recalibrating how deeply artificial intelligence will be embedded across AWS, retail operations, advertising and consumer experiences. Amazon does not merely want to use AI; it wants to define the layers at which AI becomes indispensable, whether for sellers optimizing listings, advertisers managing campaigns or consumers discovering products.

After all, retailers are treating conversational interfaces as a new commerce surface where content, discovery and payments converge. PYMNTS Intelligence found that 42% of shoppers used AI assistants during Black Friday to find discounts, 35% to track prices and 31% to compare products.

A day earlier, on Tuesday (Dec. 16), Amazon also made the announcement that  Fire TV customers can now enjoy Instagram in a new experience built for TV.

“Our mission is to get you to the world’s best content fast, and we’re thrilled to welcome Instagram to Fire TV,” said Aidan Marcuss, vice president of Fire TV, in a statement. “We’re committed to keep pushing the boundaries of entertainment on customers’ biggest screens.”

The Instagram-for-TV partnership speaks to Amazon’s obsession with surfaces. Every new interface where attention aggregates, whether a smart TV, a shopping app, or a voice assistant, is a potential monetization layer. Amazon wants to be present wherever discovery happens, not just where transactions close.

That goal also informs Amazon’s increasingly circular relationship with OpenAI, where it is simultaneously competitor, partner and customer via AWS, which reflects a broader strategy: ensure that no dominant AI capability exists outside Amazon’s infrastructure reach.

Amazon’s $10 billion investment and chip deal with OpenAI, announced Tuesday, shows that even when Amazon is not the face of innovation, it aims to be the backbone.

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How Walmart Is Fighting Back

Walmart’s most eye-catching disclosure this quarter was not topline sales growth, which remains steady but unspectacular. It was the 33% year-over-year growth of its U.S. Retail Media business, six times faster than overall company revenue, and the revelation that retail media and membership fees together now account for roughly one-third of Walmart’s operating income.

Walmart Connect U.S. advertising grew 33%, while global advertising increased 53%, including Vizio.

What makes Walmart’s performance particularly significant is not just the growth rate, but the context. Retail media is expanding during a period when consumer spending is cautious, brand budgets are scrutinized, and traditional digital advertising platforms are under regulatory and signal-loss pressure. That Walmart is thriving in this environment underscores the structural advantage of first-party data married to physical-world purchase behavior at national scale.

More importantly, Walmart’s retail media success signals something deeper: the company is learning how to monetize intent rather than just transactions.

What Walmart is building is not just a retail operation with add-ons; it is a layered ecosystem in which commerce is the base, but monetization increasingly happens above it. This architecture closely mirrors Amazon’s evolution over the past decade and suggests that Walmart believes the future economics of retail will look far more like platforms than stores.