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

AI Strategies // June 22, 2026 AI is now doing parts of merchants’ jobs, managing products and vendors By Mitchell Parton Ivy Liu Retailers are beginning to use AI to automate certain parts of the merchandising process, to determine what to order or even to make deals on their behalf. A slew of tech companies like Duvo.

ai, Relex Solutions and Gain have arisen or added new functionality over the past few years to help merchants with tasks like managing inventory or communicating and negotiating with vendors. Some of these companies are still in the early days of working with retailers in the U. S.

, but this could soon reshape what the roles of buyers or other employees within retail organizations look like globally. 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 Nor