AI is now doing parts of merchants’ jobs, managing products and vendors

The pitch to retail companies is that instead of analyzing data themselves or having back-and-forths with suppliers in email threads, AI agents could do those tasks for them.

Some retailers have developed such functionality in-house. Walmart last year announced Wally, a GenAI-powered assistant for Walmart merchants that automates data entry and analysts, root-cause identification, operational questions and advanced calculation. “When we think about category planning and merchandising, it’s personal, local and human,” a Walmart spokesperson told Modern Retail. Applying AI is really to help serve customers and associates better so they can spend more time on the human aspects of their day-to-day lives instead of tactical, manual work.” Also in 2025, Target revealed Trend Brain, a “trend intelligence platform” that processes visual and written trend data and provides insights specific to Target’s private brands.

Others are just beginning to look at solutions.

“We see meaningful opportunities to use AI to improve assortment planning, demand forecasting, inventory placement, vendor collaboration, product content and supply chain execution,” Adolfo Rodriguez, evp and chief technology and information officer for Guitar Center, said in an email. “The goal is not simply to automate existing processes, but also to help our teams make better decisions and create more value for customers and associates.”

Today, Guitar Center uses traditional processes such as purchase orders and advance shipping notices to vendors to provide information, Rodriguez said. But he added the company sees opportunity for AI to provide a richer data exchange with vendors. That could include more precise delivery timing, better order visibility, RFID-related information and more connected inventory tracking from manufacturer to distribution center to store, he said.

Rodriguez said AI is especially relevant to the merchandising field as “the work depends on making better decisions across large, complex sets of data: which products to carry, which vendors to partner with, how to anticipate demand, where to place inventory, when to order and how to serve customers with more relevant product information.”

Agents are talking to suppliers

Additionally, a number of tech companies now have products that offer to take over many parts of the vendor negotiation process through automation. Walmart uses a negotiation agent from a company called Pactum, according to the tech provider’s website, which said Walmart has used the company’s bots to extend payment terms across thousands of suppliers.

Gain, a tech company based in Tel Aviv, Israel creates AI-powered “digital co-workers” that retailers and other companies can interact with via Teams and Outlook. One is called Natalie, which focuses on developing category strategy and negotiating with suppliers on the company’s behalf. Ben does the same thing for managing retail operations, like working with telecom or facilities partners.

Jason Busch, co-founder and head of strategy for Gain, said the company has worked with large companies in North America and Europe, including a major U.S. retailer that the company can’t name yet, according to Busch. He could say the company has worked with Tempo Beer Industries, a CPG company that produces beer and distributes Pepsi in the Middle East.

Busch said many retailers spend most of their time focusing on top-selling products, and Gain can come in to negotiate and communicate with suppliers retailers may not have worked with recently. “That could involve a price negotiation, it can involve contract-terms negotiation, it could involve promotions,” he said.

Different businesses have different levels of comfort when it comes to how much agency to give to non-human “employees,” Busch said. “Our guidance is, you should always have a human in the loop until trust is built, and then the human should still be in the loop, but you can figure out at what cadence you want the check-in to be,” he said.

He added that employers in Europe and the Middle East are more willing to experiment with AI employees than in North America, as there are smaller labor pools in those regions. In Europe, he said, strict labor laws have made virtual workers more attractive to employers.

“There are, rightfully so, in North America concerns over whether or not this could replace jobs in the future,” Busch said. “We don’t position it that way. We say: There’s so much work that delivers huge value, which is not getting done today, and that’s what we pursue.”

Similarly, a European tech company called Duvo.ai has started working with some retailers to read emails from suppliers on price changes and price proposals. The company automates processes that historically weren’t accessible to automation, such as out-of-stock prevention, supplier negotiations, invoice reconciliation and freight audits. “We’re not focusing on any one narrow use case,” said Tomas Cupr, CEO of Duvo.ai. Its clients include retailers Holland & Barrett in the U.K. and Heureka in the Czech Republic.

It will analyze commodity costs, manufacturing costs, labor rates, transport, packaging and the supplier’s acceptable margin, and get a range of what the retailer would want to buy the SKU for. Duvo.ai will respond to the supplier on behalf of the retailer and let the supplier know whether it accepts or rejects proposals for each SKU.

Retailers “just don’t have enough people to spend one hour of research per SKU,” Cupr said. There is still a human in the loop; if a supplier is angry or rejecting too many of the offers, Duvo.ai will notify the retailer and have them respond. “You cannot expect this to be fully autonomous,” he added.

Building smarter data platforms

Other tech companies focus more on using AI to provide data insights to merchants.

Relex Solutions, a roughly 20-year-old retail software provider, has started leveraging AI agents to automate the merchandising process, including planning weekly meetings with merchants and developing planograms, price updates and promotions. Its clients include Whole Foods and Sprouts.

“The merchant’s job is even elevated now,” said Patrick O’Mara, director of Solutions Principles for Relex. “It’s focusing much more on the strategic aspects of the role and the vendor negotiations; working with operations to ensure that the plans the merchant has placed are going into effect; and working with the finance team to ensure that the merchandise financial planning angle is fully covered.”

Crisp, a data analytics platform for retailers, distributors, CPGs and brokers based in Arkansas, aims to help retailers predict demand and automate ordering. Dirk Herdes, general manager and evp for Crisp, said, for fresh produce, the platform can help grocers manage hundreds if not thousands of items, determining how much to order every week to reduce waste and spoilage as well as increase turnover.

Herdes declined to share which retailers the company works with, but said they include small-format stores and distributors in the U.S. and regional grocers in Northern Europe. He said the company works in grocery as well as center-store products such as health and beauty

“It’s really democratizing the use of information, so operators can see exactly what’s happening,” Herdes said. “They don’t have to wait on a report or some internal team to design the analysis; they can take advantage of the data there and make decisions on the fly.”

Category teams at retailers may also use Zenline AI to address assortment gaps based on shopper insights, track demand and understand what consumers are willing to pay, Arber Sejdiji, CEO and co-founder of the category management software platform, said in an email.

“Our AI agents do the grunt work in the background — they read external and internal data, clean it and build a deep understanding of each category,” Sejdiji said. “No human could validate this volume of data, which is exactly what makes acting on AI in assortment first such a market advantage. A planner opens the tool and sees concrete, margin-tied recommendations for the next actions — ready to review and pass on to the head of assortment.”

Currently, Zenline works with European retailers in categories such as beauty, groceries, furniture electronics and fashion, including Conrad, Otto and Futterhaus. The company has plans to begin offering its AI agents to U.S. retailers this fall.

“Today, a planner spends most of the month pulling reports, reconciling messy product attributes, and eyeballing hundreds of SKUs or any number of competitors,” Sejdiji said. “Zenline automatically clusters all of that and surfaces only what actually needs a decision. The planner stays in charge. They spend their time on category strategy, actions, and supplier and brand negotiations.”