Walmart's move to common platforms that work across various functions, divisions and stores is enabling a data and AI flywheel that is paying off nicely in an uncertain economy.
To Walmart CTO Suresh Kumar said these platforms enable the retail giant to leverage data for customer experience, inventory flows and automaton. At Walmart's investor meeting, the company laid out a bevy of projects that leverage generative and agentic AI. Walmart also maintained its first quarter outlook.
At a high-level Walmart detailed the following:
- Sparky, an AI shopping assistant.
- Trend-to-Product, a tool to speed up fashion design.
- Just Go AI Checkout, a computer vision checkout system that will be rolled out to all Sam's Club locations.
- Wally, an AI assistant for merchants that will evolve into an inventory AI agent.
Kumar said Walmart has a unique advantage given it serves more consumers across more physical and digital touch points.
"Walmart has got a great advantage because we serve customers in more ways than anybody else, so that means that we have many more places where we can understand both the customer and their intent. Ultimately, it's all about how effectively we can take the data, and then the models can work on the data," said Kumar. "Walmart has got a better advantage than just about anybody else, just given the fact that it's not just only about online, it's about how we saw our customers inside the store, the services, put it all together, you have a much better view from a customer perspective of what they want as well as what is the context."
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Kumar also noted that Walmart has had a long history investing in AI and automation to orchestrate inventory flows, but generative AI ensures every associate has the right tools. "We believe that going forward, customer experience is going to become more personalized and contextual," said Kumar.
Internally, the focus for Walmart is on inventory and using AI to be a better predictor of demand.
The impact of leveraging platforms is clear to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. He said:
"What Suresh and the team have done to create commonality enables us to optimize. And we weren't able to optimize before. We were by nature sub-optimizing. And when you layer AI into this entire equation, you think about improvements in forecasting and other areas, it gets really exciting to think about what's possible in the future to do a better job of predicting demand, matching it with supply and taking out all of the costs and other friction that goes along with imperfect freight flow."
Breaking down silos with horizontal platforms
Walmart executives during the investor day session repeatedly referred to platforms that use AI for multiple use cases. Consider:
- Sam's Club CEO Chris Nicholas said the unit is leveraging Walmart's broader platforms including the fulfillment network and tech stack to expand. Using AI, Sam's Club has already eliminate 100 million tasks for associates.
- Tom Ward, Chief Operating Officer at Sam's Club, said his team is building a seamless connection from supply chain to club to e-commerce business to last mile delivery. "These platforms were and continue to be transformational in the speed and quality of service our members and customers receive," said Ward.
- These platforms pay off across Walmart units. "Because we're a part of Walmart, we do not have the same fixed cost burden or the long development lead time that we would have as a stand-alone operator. We are using the same tech platforms a the Walmart commerce platforms for our e-commerce app. We're utilizing the Spark driver network for deliveries, including for Express," said Ward. "We are merging supply chains with Walmart U.S. And that will help us enable two day shipping nationwide for most items over time, even in places where we don't have clubs, which means that not all members will have to live near a physical club."
John Furner, CEO and President of Walmart US, said the platform approach give the company real-time visibility into what's happening from store to supply chain. Walmart can leverage AI and data to respond to trends quickly.
Here’s a look at Walmart’s key AI projects across the company.
