NRF 2025: Big Tech pushes AI agents as retailers weigh outcomes

NRF’s BIG Show 2025 kicked off today with a message of encouragement to retailers from Nvidia on the importance of investing in AI. 

“Just start,” said Azita Martin, VP and GM for Retail and CPG at Nvidia, in a keynote conversation with Walmart US president and CEO John Furner. “Because early adopters will become the leaders.”  

Presenting at a later session, Microsoft CVP for Global Industry Shelley Bransten encouraged the audience to begin applying AI in scenarios across four pillars: shopper experience, supply chains, data, and the retail workforce.  

Microsoft’s “Retail Ready” positioning extends the company’s AI-centric advice from last year’s NRF 2024 event, when the company encouraged retailers to look for AI use cases by winnowing down the broad range of scenarios to the most promising opportunities. At this year’s event, Microsoft cited a dozen brands that they say have embraced their AI-focused offerings including Myntra, Chanel, Coles, Spar ICS, Woolworths Group, Sainsbury’s, Pets at Home, Walmart, and Canadian Tire. 

Lessons learned building shopper and associate AI agent scenarios 

Bransten invited two customers on stage to discuss their latest IT advances for the retail environment, which spanned both shopper and associate scenarios. Both firms have thousands of locations and have invested in apps that offer capabilities including conversational AI-driven recommendations, task optimization, computer vision for stock management, and agents for internal policies and processes.  

AI agents will play a part in both the guest retailers’ operational landscapes, the speakers said.  

At one, an internal chat tool that had been used generally for analysis and content creation will be the basis for more specific agents for different business groups. In IT, for example, the agent is integrated with their ServiceNow system to more quickly respond to technical support incidents. 

At the other company, an app that tells associates which stock to move to the sales floor from the backroom inventory provides data signals back to headquarters for further analysis and optimization. 

Microsoft noted the preview launch of two of its own pre-built retail AI agents before NRF 2025. A Personalized Shopping Agent provides context-aware conversational assistance. The agent analyzes the customer’s intent and uses AI semantic search to match the requirements gathered in the conversation. It is designed to be used either directly by the shopper or by an employee as a clienteling tool. 

The Store Operations Agent, also in preview, is a headless agent, meaning it can be built into other interfaces, including Microsoft Teams. This app, to be used by employees, provides a single interface that can work across multiple data sources and company policies to provide product information or help with store policies and procedures. Store Operations Agent is a pre-built solution in Microsoft Copilot Studio and is provided as a part of Microsoft Cloud for Retail. 

"This time last year, I was having conversations with retailers around the world who couldn’t wait to tap the seemingly unlimited potential of AI,” Bransten wrote in the post. "Today, the conversations I have are more sharply focused on identifying AI use cases that can help retailers grow revenue and increase profitability across the value chain." 

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