Walmart’s AI – At its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, Walmart showed how AI is moving from experiments to day-to-day retail work—from a “Code Puppy” agent that helps employees write solutions to AI-powered fulfillment, a credentialing program built with OpenAI, and a
Walmart’s annual shareholders meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas didn’t sound like a tech demo. It sounded like a factory floor trying to keep up—only the tools changing hands were AI systems.
For a retailer that employs more than 2 million people and serves hundreds of millions of customers each week across thousands of stores in the US and around the world. the stakes are simple: speed matters. and errors cost money. At the meeting. executives and frontline workers described how AI is being folded into day-to-day operations across stores. warehouses. and customer touchpoints.
CEO John Furner framed the company’s approach as broad access, not a gated program for a small group of engineers. “We want to democratize the access to learning and democratize the access to making a difference, so that people can learn and grow,” Furner told reporters last week.
Walmart is working to speed up its business with AI in just about every aspect of its operation. But the most striking example wasn’t a polished consumer app. It was a new internal “Code Puppy” agent built by Walmart Global Tech distinguished engineer Mike Pfaffenberger and shared with the organization.
Walmart already has a dizzying number of agents and a handful of super-agents tailored for particular use cases. Code Puppy stood out for one ability: it can help people across the organization “vibecode” their own solutions—from salaried software engineers to hourly forklift drivers.
Pfaffenberger’s work also matched the company’s argument for how ideas should travel. Unlike companies that may centralize AI development within traditionally tech-focused departments. Walmart’s approach is designed to accelerate the pace at which new ideas can arise from the front lines and spread throughout the global enterprise. Furner said, “It doesn’t matter where the idea came from. It could be in Bangalore. It could be in Greater Toronto. It could be Mexico City. It could be in Wichita, Kansas. Wherever the best idea is. we should take that and scale it.” He added. “We just simply surface what’s already been built. and then we see the adoption rates go much faster.”.
That acceleration is where the controversy entered the room.
A shareholder proposal backed by United for Respect. a coalition of retail workers. criticized the impact of AI and automation on frontline employees. Ava Williams, an overnight stocker in Washington, presented the proposal during the Walmart shareholders meeting. She said the new AI-powered workflows push workers like her to cut corners as they race against unrealistic expectations.
“We are not asking Walmart to stop using technology. We are asking for technology that works for us, not against us,” Williams said.
Shareholders rejected the measure, and the company said it has multiple channels for employees to share their ideas and concerns.
While the debate played out over worker pressure, Walmart continued rolling out its broader AI infrastructure.
The company officially launched a credentialing program built with OpenAI and made it available to every employee. fulfilling a commitment it announced back in September. The training program is intended to help employees build practical confidence with AI—learning to integrate the tools into the problems they face in the real world.
Walmart pointed to one case: a logistics manager who completed a Google AI certification and used those skills to develop an agent that helps Walmart identify routes that would get drivers home faster with fewer empty trucks.
AI is also shaping fulfillment on the store floor and in food delivery partnerships.
Walmart’s delivery partnership with in-store Subway restaurants now comes with AI in the middle of the workflow. Walmart order pickers already follow an AI-generated route through the store to fill the basket. Walmart’s head of digital fulfillment. Greg Cathey. said AI now also finds the right moment in that route to queue Subway workers to make the order.
“That is the AI that’s timing everything to make sure the sandwich is going to be hot if it’s hot — always fresh,” Cathey said.
Elsewhere, Walmart is using AI to sharpen what it believes customers are actually signaling.
At Walmart’s warehouse club. Sam’s Club. Director of Consumer Insights Sue Jervis said she can gain new details from the chain’s fast-growing member feedback community thanks to the power of multimodal AI analysis. Jervis expressed a visceral disgust for five-star surveys and said the conversations and video clips she gets from participants give her a much more precise understanding of what really matters.
With AI, Jervis said she can tap into the 150,000-member group and extract not just what members are saying, but how they are saying it—the emotional register behind feedback about the club’s products and services.
Walmart is also learning from how customers interact with its Sparky chatbot, which acts as a personal shopping assistant. Chief Growth Officer Seth Dallaire said Walmart is “learning a ton just from how they’re interacting with Sparky relative to ways that maybe historically they have interacted with us.”.
He said the company isn’t rushing to serve ads in the chat. focusing instead on ensuring customers get what they want from the experience. “We see long natural language query strings that look very different than someone typing in ‘men’s shoes,’” Dallaire said. “That is in itself is a really interesting piece of information for us.”.
Even the company’s internal celebration of the technology had a practical ring.
On Friday. Furner handed the President’s Innovation Award to Pfaffenberger and his colleague. John Choi. for their work on Code Puppy. Chief Technology Officer Suresh Kumar described Code Puppy as “a vibe-coding tool that turns associates into engineers.” Kumar said. “They built a tool that supports the entire company.”.
Pfaffenberger’s documentation for the project includes a line that pushes the message home: “Would you rather plow a field with one ox or 1,024 puppies? If you pick the ox, better slam that back button in your browser.”
Walmart, big as it is, is betting on the puppies—while a rejected proposal put the spotlight on whether the new pace is being felt equally on the floor and behind the counter.
Walmart AI Code Puppy OpenAI credentialing program Sam's Club Sparky chatbot Greg Cathey Seth Dallaire Sue Jervis United for Respect Ava Williams Mike Pfaffenberger John Choi Suresh Kumar