OpenAI’s latest partnership with Walmart, enabling direct ChatGPT purchases, marks a significant shift from its traditional supplier-focused dealmaking, offering a concrete, everyday application for AI that demands renewed investor attention and patience as the industry matures beyond speculative investments.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, OpenAI has consistently captured headlines, from groundbreaking model releases to billion-dollar valuations. Yet, for many investors, the practical, everyday applications that justify these astronomical figures have remained largely abstract. The recent announcement of a partnership between OpenAI and retail giant Walmart, allowing customers to make purchases directly through ChatGPT, signals a potentially transformative moment for the industry and a critical juncture for those evaluating AI investments.
The ‘Lopsided’ Reality of AI Dealmaking
For a considerable period, OpenAI’s dealmaking strategy has been described as “lopsided.” The primary focus has been on securing deals with suppliers—companies providing the immense computational power, specialized chips, and foundational infrastructure necessary to train and run large language models (LLMs). These partnerships, while essential for technological advancement, often represent behind-the-scenes investments rather than direct, revenue-generating customer integrations.
This dynamic has created a gap between the grand ambitions articulated by AI leaders—envisioning economic transformation and scientific breakthroughs—and the tangible business applications available to the average consumer or enterprise. Investors have poured billions into the AI sector, driven by future potential, but often without a clear roadmap for everyday utility and widespread monetization beyond infrastructure plays.
Walmart: A Concrete Leap Towards Agentic Commerce
The collaboration with Walmart represents a pivotal shift towards customer-side dealmaking for OpenAI. This initiative introduces what is being called “agentic commerce,” where an AI agent—in this case, ChatGPT—can directly execute tasks on behalf of the user. For example, customers can provide ChatGPT with a back-to-school supply list or even inspiration photos of kitchen gadgets, and the AI will populate a digital shopping cart with relevant items, ready for instant checkout.
This functionality aims to streamline the shopping experience, offering unprecedented convenience and personalization. While some might question if online shopping truly needs to be easier, the potential to reduce friction, save time, and attract new demographics is significant. The market responded positively, with Walmart’s stock experiencing a surge that added tens of billions to its market capitalization, placing it firmly in contention to join the elite club of trillion-dollar companies, as reported by Yahoo Finance.
Bridging the Gap: From Grand Ambitions to Practical Worth
The Walmart partnership begins to bridge the chasm between OpenAI’s lofty aspirations and the more mundane business applications that often characterize early-stage technology adoption. It provides a tangible example of AI’s “practical worth” in a sector accessible to millions.
This approach highlights a necessary phase for the AI industry: finding diverse product-market fit. Even seemingly trivial applications, or those that push boundaries like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s openness to ChatGPT allowing erotica under certain circumstances, as covered by The Verge, are part of exploring the full spectrum of user needs and preferences. For patient investors, these developments underscore a long game, where marginal gains from varied applications are expected to accumulate into substantial value.
Navigating the Challenges: Reliability and User Experience
While the Walmart deal is promising, investors must also consider the operational challenges that OpenAI faces. Discussions within the developer and user communities reveal growing frustrations with the consistency and quality of OpenAI’s models. Users have reported issues with DALL-E generating unwanted elements like pencils when a specific style is requested, and more broadly, concerns about ChatGPT’s performance.
Some users perceive recent models like GPT-4o as “dumber than its predecessors,” prone to verbosity, silly mistakes, and repetition, suggesting an “overfitting model” rather than genuine intelligence improvements. Furthermore, the OpenAI API, critical for enterprise integrations, has experienced “bad gateway exceptions” and partial outages, raising questions about system reliability and stability. These operational hurdles, if not addressed effectively, could impact the scalability and trustworthiness of OpenAI’s offerings for large-scale enterprise partners like Walmart, potentially dampening long-term investor confidence.
The Long-Term Investor Outlook
For investors dedicated to an in-depth financial analysis and a long-term strategy, OpenAI’s evolving dealmaking strategy, epitomized by the Walmart partnership, merits close attention. This move signifies a maturation of the AI market, transitioning from a heavy emphasis on foundational technology and supplier relationships to a greater focus on direct consumer and business applications.
The success of “agentic commerce” will hinge on factors such as user adoption, the seamless integration of AI into daily routines, and OpenAI’s ability to deliver consistent, high-quality, and reliable models. While challenges in model performance and API stability persist, the strategic pivot towards practical, high-visibility consumer applications like Walmart’s offers a clearer path to monetization and sustained growth. Patient investors who recognize the inherent complexities and development cycles of revolutionary technology may find significant long-term value in companies that successfully navigate this transition.
