NRF 2025: Agentic AI for retail steals the show

Five reasons why AI dominated Retail’s Big Show

Retailers were all in on AI at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show, where approximately 40,000 global attendees experienced a continuous focus on all things AI.  The focus was well-deserved, given AI’s current impact on retail and expectations of further disruption. 

This reality was not lost on event organizers who set the tone early by featuring a keynote with NRF Chairman and President and CEO of Walmart U.S. John Furner and Vice President and General Manager of Retail & CPG at NVIDIA Azita Martin. They described how AI serves as an accelerant for today’s retail revolution, a theme that was sustained during the three-day event held January 12-14. AI was so prevalent at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show that it appeared in the title of roughly one-third of the nearly 100 educational “Exhibitor Big Ideas” NRF sessions.  

No idea was bigger than AI on the show floor, where attendees were able to see AI in action and truly appreciate how predictive, generative, and agentic AI impact retail in ways described by speakers. While AI touches virtually every aspect of retail, five recurring themes stood out at NRF, including:  

#1. Agentic AI is revolutionary

Agentic AI is a great example of the accelerating pace of change in retail. Agentic AI wasn’t being discussed a year ago, as SVP of  Walmart’s Enterprise Business Services David Glick noted during a pre-NRF webinar in which he discussed AI’s impact on retail jobs with SymphonyAI president Manish Choudhary. Agentic AI is now being heralded for its ability to dramatically transform retail business processes to increase productivity and decision-making accuracy. Autonomous AI agents and copilots are appealing for retailers because of how they proactively perform complex, data-intensive tasks to accelerate workflows for core processes such as new product introductions, promotion planning, and assortment optimization. This ability of agentic AI to function independently differentiates it from generative AI which requires prompts from users to perform tasks. 

#2. The Data unification imperative

Data is the driving force that makes the magic of AI possible. That’s why a frequent topic of conversation at NRF involved overcoming the perennial retail challenge of unifying disparate sources of data. This challenge has only grown more difficult over time amid a proliferation of data sources and exponential growth of data volumes. It’s why the concept of connected retail championed by SymphonyAI with the CINDE Connected Retail Platform is seen as essential for future retail success and was a hot topic at NRF. Numerous retailers spoke openly about connected retail, why they have embraced it, and the results they are already seeing. 

#3. Automated decision-making

Retailers are on an unending quest to improve productivity, especially traditional grocers and other retailers who derive a large percentage of sales from high velocity food and consumable categories. There was intense interest at NRF around specific use cases where AI can have an immediate and quantifiable impact. Some of the top areas of interest included category management, marketing, and supply chain. These areas stood out because  generative AI helps eliminate tedious tasks related to data extraction and manipulation necessary to create planograms, optimize promotions, or develop demand forecasts. These are just three of the areas where retailers are keen to accelerate how data is accessed and delivered to employees to improve productivity and accuracy so more time can be spent on strategic activities. 

#4. Shopper insights discovery

Shopper insights have always mattered in retail, but the big change made possible by AI is the depth and precision of insights and the speed at which those insights can be identified, quantified and acted upon. This is one of the top use cases for predictive and generative AI and was understandably a top area of interest among retailers at NRF. It is understood that retailers with the best shopper insights can personalize and improve promotional effectiveness, thereby increasing loyalty, basket size, and trip frequency. The ability of retailers to gain visibility into what they’ve never been able to see before with stunning speed and accuracy is an area where retailers left NRF wanting to learn more. 

#5. Improved store execution

Retailers face huge operational challenges due to the cost and availability of labor combined with shoppers’ elevated store experience expectations. These challenges are evident in key areas such as on-shelf availability, planogram compliance and pricing accuracy. Retailers at NRF discovered how AI can be instrumental in addressing each of these challenges due to advances in AI-based computer vision that make it possible to identify previously undetectable lapses in execution, prioritize corrective actions, and deploy labor to perform the highest-value tasks. The concept of store analytics—or store intelligence—is gaining traction industrywide as leading operators recognize the value of seeing what they’ve been missing in stores. 

Retailers are understandably wary of bold claims made at industry trade shows, but what was different about the AI conversations at NRF this year is that realization has moved beyond the hype phase. There is now a preponderance of evidence that AI delivers on the value creation front by helping retailers solve their toughest business challenges. The other realization for retailers at NRF was that AI will be a tremendous source of competitive advantage for those who take swift action to unlock its transformational benefits.