NRF 2026: Retail's Big Show puts agentic AI centre stage

Major retailers and technology vendors set this year's innovation agenda in New York this week, writes Miya Knights, Retail Technology Publisher

NRF 2026: Retail's Big Show opened in New York this week with a clear signal that two forces moving in parallel will drive industry growth: artificial intelligence (AI) for discovery, consideration and transaction, and stores designed as community hubs that deliver value beyond price. 

NRF Board Chair and BJ's Wholesale Club Chairman and CEO Bob Eddy opened the show by framing retail's role as both economic engine and social infrastructure. 

Eddy positioned retailers as essential to communities during volatile periods, arguing that the sector's contribution extends beyond transactions: "Retail once again proved that we are more than just an industry. We are a stabilising force in people's lives."

To illustrate his point, DICK'S Sporting Goods Executive Chairman Ed Stack joined him to unpack how the US sporting goods leader is rethinking store formats, culture, and value in a cautious consumer climate. 

Building store killing concepts

Stack's keynote conversation with Eddy offered a candid look at how DICK'S is engineering physical retail for the next decade — not by shrinking stores, but by turning them into experiential, service-led community destinations.

The Executive Chairman said the retailer's House of Sport concept began with a deliberately provocative brief: "We need to build the concept that will kill DICK'S Sporting Goods… if somebody else built this store across the street… we're out of business.”

Stack described the concept's evolution as a multi-year reset built around an "ecosystem" of community, service and product — with DICK'S now operating 35 locations and planning rapid expansion.

Culture as a competitive moat

A second theme was culture — and how internal behaviours shape execution speed, innovation and resilience. For example, an industrial psychologist's assessment of the retailer's top performers stuck with Stack: they are intensely competitive, but "the competition is out there… competition isn't in here.”

To keep that mindset practical, Stack said the company also enforces language that turns friction into forward motion — including a rule that no one can dismiss an idea with "no, because"; responses must start with "yes, if.”

Value beyond price 

On the consumer, Stack said DICK'S shoppers remain comparatively resilient, but are more cautious and more demanding about "value," which he defined as performance, confidence and outcomes, not just discounts: "Value is not always a lower price… it's what does it mean to me?”

AI, he added, is being approached primarily as a productivity engine: "We're looking at AI really as a productivity tool, more than a replacement of personnel.”

Google CEO: agentic commerce needs open rails

If the DICK'S session was about reinventing the store, a keynote by Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai focused on reinventing the digital path to purchase, as AI shifts shopping journeys from keywords and filters to conversational discovery and agent-led decision making.

Pichai described AI as a "platform shift" that is "a fundamental rewiring of technology," and said Google is investing across infrastructure, models and products to support the next era of retail experiences.

He pointed to rapid growth in retailer adoption via Google application programming interfaces (APIs), citing an increase from 8.3 trillion tokens processed in December 2024 to over 90 trillion a year later.

The CEO said Google's message to retailers was that the AI opportunity is expansionary. But he added that the industry needs shared standards to make agentic commerce work at scale. 

In response, Pichai introduced the universal commerce protocol (UCP), calling it open and compatible with other emerging protocols, and developed in partnership with several retailers, including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart.

Critically, he stressed that the future must preserve retailer-owned customer relationships, where Google does not want to disintermediate consumer journeys, but rather to "facilitate those journeys," he said, "but… in a way that preserves that value in that relationship," with retailers staying the merchant of record.

"Rewriting the retail playbook" 

John Furner, incoming Walmart Inc. President and CEO, joined Pichai to frame agentic AI as a shift on the scale of search's impact on ecommerce. He said Walmart is already deploying multiple agents: Sparky for customers, an associate agent on handheld devices, tools for sellers and suppliers, and a developer agent to accelerate internal build.

He described agentic AI as "rewriting the retail playbook," and positioned Walmart's goal as closing the gap between "I want it" and "I have it." In a headline partnership announcement, Furner said Walmart is building an agent-led commerce experience within Google Gemini, combining Gemini's intelligence with Walmart's catalogue, pricing and fulfilment capabilities, and enabling account linking for deeper personalisation.

For retailers watching closely, the subtext of both sessions was the same: as AI becomes more agentic, differentiation will hinge on who owns the customer relationship — and who can adapt their culture and strategies to translate innovation into experiences that feel genuinely more helpful, more human, and help retailers deliver more value beyond just price.