Four months ago, John Furner took the helm as CEO of Walmart Inc. after a lifetime at the company.
Today, he’s steering a “people-led, tech-powered” transformation of the world’s largest retailer, which employs more than 2 million people worldwide. Furner has already centralized Walmart’s historically fragmented tech and product divisions under unified leadership in an attempt to supercharge enterprise-wide products and services—especially AI capabilities.
The company is betting on an agentic, omni-channel future. The evolution of Sparky, Walmart’s AI shopping assistant, is a big part of that, as is real-time supply chain automation. Yet this aggressive digital integration comes at a moment when the broader public narrative around artificial intelligence is souring, highlighting critical questions about automation and labor—especially for a company that has always sold itself as being all about its people.
This journey is deeply personal for Furner. His Walmart career began in 1993 as a part-time hourly associate in the garden center of Store 100 in Bentonville, Arkansas. Over the next three decades, he rose through a string of merchant and operational roles across Walmart U.S., Sam’s Club, and international markets, ultimately serving as CEO of Sam’s Club and then president and CEO of Walmart U.S. before taking the top job at the parent Walmart Inc.
In other words, his POV is Walmart-specific in the extreme. And it offers an uncommonly close link between the frontline realities of retail and the dizzying demands of 21st-century corporate leadership.
As thousands of Walmart employees descend on Arkansas for the company’s annual Associates Week, Furner sat down for his first in-depth conversation in his new role. He discussed everything from leading through a moment of massive change to turning forklift operators and developers alike into AI builders.
“It’s about enabling a system of creators, where people can create the best solutions that will work for our business,” Furner says. “And then once you build it somewhere, we can scale it globally.”
You’ve been in this job for four months, but you’ve been at the company for your entire working life, and even before that. What, if anything, has surprised you so far about being CEO?
Well, first, I have been around the company most of my life. I kind of joke that I started when I was 3 years old, when my dad started at Walmart.
In the last six months or so, even before I was officially in the role, I’ve had a chance to go to a lot of our markets in Asia, here in the U.S., and in Mexico and Canada. And I wouldn’t say it’s a surprise, but what’s been refreshing is just seeing how there’s just more common in all these markets than I remember. Seeing how our associates have a common purpose and values—and the way they’re innovating and working together—is really impressive.
And so this [Associates Week] is a bit of a full-circle moment from the 48 years, call it, that I’ve been around the company and the 33 years I’ve been working at it.
Walmart is a real bellwether of consumer sentiment. Your first full earnings as CEO showed that consumer demand remains strong. On the other hand, the net profit would have been even better if your fuel cost hadn’t been so high—and those fuel costs are being experienced on a smaller but still very meaningful scale at the consumer level, as prices at the pump. What do you see when you look at the data?
For the last five or six years in the U.S., in particular, we’ve been working on what we’d call an omni-strategy, which is we want to be there for a customer with what they want, how they want it, when they want it—whether that’s delivered at their home and in their refrigerator, at the curbside, or at the shelf.
We’ve seen a lot of success over a number of quarters where we’ve had consistent results, top-line growth and share gains. We’ve had share gains across multiple income groups for a few years, and this last quarter, we had share gains across all the different categories that we’re in, which was great to see. The share gains have been strongest for the upper-income customers that we’ve been attracting to the brand over the last few years.
But we also wanted to acknowledge that rising fuel prices are real. They have an impact on a customer’s ability to spend. What we’re seeing now is [that] customers and members at Sam’s Club, when they fill up, they’re buying a little less than 10 gallons per trip. That’s a lower number than we’ve seen in a while. It’s probably been about four years since we’ve seen that.
So customers are making choices. We’ve said for probably two and a half, three years now: The customer’s been very resilient and choiceful. Most of the customers that we’re talking about are not buying less fuel, from what we can tell. They’re just doing it in more frequent intervals and they’re coming more often.
We’re hopeful that over the next couple months, we’ll see some of those prices come down—particularly as you get into back-to-school season and you have families thinking about how they best equip their kids for first day of class, whether it’s the right backpack, the right apparel, the lunches they want to pack.
One of your first big initiatives was streamlining your tech and product teams. They used to work separately across Sam’s Club, U.S. Walmart, Walmart International. Now, under CTO Suresh Kumar and Daniel Danker, EVP of AI acceleration, those units are being brought together. What drove that change?
Going into this fiscal year—late January, early February—there were three areas where we wanted to make sure that we were doing what we call “build once and scale globally.” And that’s true in product and design, which is Daniel Danker’s role and includes accelerating AI. Suresh is our global chief technology officer. And then the third was [Seth Dallaire], chief growth officer for Walmart U.S., who we have 1780401610 given responsibility for the entire enterprise [as chief growth officer for Walmart Inc].
With the three of those, we’re positioning ourselves so that once we build something somewhere in the world—if it’s an idea that we like, that works, and we believe can scale—we can scale it across the platforms.
What I find in our business units, and I’ve seen this now in five countries, is that a lot of the same work is happening. It’s just nuanced locally and it may be built slightly differently. The idea that we can build something once, scale it globally, pick up our speed, and then get the features out to our associates and customers across markets, that’s really what we’re trying to do.
Let’s get into your capex guidance and what that says about where you’re going to be putting your energies and your investment in the next year. You’ve said it’s approximately 3% to 4% of net sales, is that right? So about $25 billion allocated for capex?
Sounds about right.
Can you break it down a little bit for us? How much of that is going towards automation and AI spending?
The majority of the capital expenditures are happening in two parts of the supply chain. That’s our stores and our actual supply chain that is working upstream from the stores and the fulfillment center.
We’re remodeling probably 650 to 660 stores this year. They’re performing well and they look better. They get a better apparel set. They get a new home set. They get improvements in pet and beauty—and categories that our customers are telling that they’re looking to Walmart for solutions in.
The second [part of that allocation] is the supply chain. This is a multiyear journey, and I would say we’re probably halfway through, maybe a bit more. We have around 60% of our stores this year that are receiving deliveries from some sort of automated solution.
When I started at the company, I worked in the garden center, and every day my job was to make sure that the shelves were full. I’d go find the out of stocks. I would make sure that the accounts are right. Having a system where when inventory comes off the truck, it goes not only to the department, but right to the aisle is just so much faster and easier for our associates. They can get onto the things that they want to do, which is taking care of customers and talking to people.
And then as you get into that [CapEx] allocation, some of it’s technology as we build out agentic and other capabilities designed to try to help our associates have the best access to technology and tools to make their day a bit faster and easier.
I’ll talk about Walmart U.S. for a second. They have handheld devices that have an AI agent running in the background. You have to learn so many parts of the role. We’re trying to help our associates get to proficiency much faster than it took someone like me over 30 years ago. We’re giving them the technology in their hands to empower them to be the very best they can be.
I worked at a garden center myself back in the day, loading bags of mulch into the beds of pickup trucks. It was very, very far from any kind of technology.
Sounds very familiar.
Yeah, it was a good job. Merrifield Garden Center in Merrifield, Virginia. Let’s stay on AI for a minute, specifically your shopping assistant Sparky. How does Sparky behave right now—and what’s your vision for the future?
We launched Sparky about a year ago as a tool to help you do some light research and shopping—to compare items or maybe have an interaction about things you’re going to buy.
It’s evolved into an agent, and today Sparky can help you compare products. It can help you decide how to bring a recipe to life. A big part of the country doesn’t know at two or three in the afternoon what they’re having for dinner. Sparky can help you with recipes, help you shop and pull those things into an environment where they can become reality for you.
So, Sparky’s helping us figure out what intent is all the way to action. The number of people that are using it is doubling about every quarter. Those that do use it are converting at a higher basket level. In the first quarter alone, we saw about a 35% higher basket for those who use Sparky compared to those who didn’t. So we think it’s an experience that’s helping people solve problems.
It’s going to be able to take more actions in the future. Next is it can help you understand what could be in that great recipe. We’d like it to just go ahead and put it in the cart. You pick your delivery time, and it’ll take care of the rest for you.
Sparky’s very rapidly heading to a place where it could be your personal shopping agent at Walmart. We think it’ll take a lot of time and friction out of the experience.
Do you imagine a world where using Sparky takes the customer out of the Walmart ecosystem? When I think about agentic shopping and what I would want as a shopper, there’s this question: Is it an agent for each of my favorite stores, my favorite retail environments, or is it one agent that shops at all of them?
I’d say we’re learning. It’s unclear how this will all turn out. What we do know is that Walmart has a pretty interesting technology stack where you can interact with Sparky at the top of the funnel. We have a really broad assortment—over half a billion items—and can get you a solution for the things that you’re looking for. We can move you from search to solution, while being able to put all that together in the background [because] we have the physical stores, we have the locations, the supply chain that can fulfill it all in one easy way.
As somebody who is overseeing so many employees across so many territories around the world, how do you manage change? How do you deal with anxiety among the members of your workforce who are overwhelmed by change while encouraging those who want to adopt new technologies to reinvent the way that they do their jobs?
First, I think it’s important for anybody who is in leadership or wants to be in leadership to remember that leadership is a privilege. You have the opportunity to help influence an organization—and that can be a small organization of three or four people or one like ours that spans multiple countries and millions of people. We’re here to serve our associates, who are serving our customers.
We’re people-led and tech-powered. It’s important that you hear that in that order. The technology we’re building in many cases is being built by one of our associates, or it’s an idea that one of our associates had. But it’s all being built to be able to help them serve and work in a much faster way than they have in the past.
[As a leader], you have to keep communicating what’s happening. As long as I’ve been in retail, it’s always been changing. Just getting comfortable with change is a really great trait for any leader. And with any people that you are leading—or that have allowed you to become their leader—it’s important to listen, meet them where they are, talk about the purpose and why we’re doing things, talk about how this relates to the bigger picture. And then again, you’ve got to give them great products and tools that work. And when they don’t [work], listen and fix it quickly.
How would you characterize the level of anxiety among your workforce about AI and the possibility of job replacement?
I find a lot of people who are optimistic. I think people are constantly looking for tools that make them more productive, get them the information they need, and save them time.
Everyone I talk to around the company, they’re all really busy. They have great ideas and a list of things that they want to work through and complete. I think what we’re doing is giving them the tools and skills they need to work in an even faster way.
I’ll give you two quick examples. One, we are offering certification programs to all of our associates at any level. If you want to become AI certified, you want to learn about AI, you can do that. And then you’ll be equipped to be able to take the next step, which is really exciting.
Second, we built what we call Code Puppy. It’s a vibe-coding platform where associates all over the company are able to create and build their own AI products. They can be agentic. They can be products that deliver information. [Associates] can pick what it is they’re trying to do and build those products. They’re being built by people who run forklifts all the way to our developers around the world.
It’s about enabling a system of creators, where people can create the best solutions that will work for our business. And then once you build it somewhere, we can scale it globally.
You often note that the company is gaining market share among households earning more than $100,000 a year. How do you bring those higher-end shoppers without eroding the company’s core reputation for value?
We have a long history and deep roots in what we call “every day low price.” That helps customers trust that a basket of goods [from Walmart] will be their lowest cost option over time. We may not win on every single item every day, but over time we will win on a basket of goods, and that’s really important.
That means protecting things like opening price points. It means having a good, better, best assortment throughout the categories that we’re in, and the flexibility to have a really large assortment.
People ask me if the [newer] customers will leave when things normalize. And my answer consistently has been: I don’t believe that will be the case. Because people can pick up [from Walmart] on the way home from work. They can have a delivery. They can get an express delivery. We can now reach about 60% of the country in under 30 minutes. The combination of a broad assortment and a faster experience, those really resonate with customers of all income groups.
About a year ago, we decided it was time to go out and start talking about the company differently. There were a lot of customers and people that didn’t know that we did delivery, didn’t know we could deliver in an hour, didn’t know about the half-hour delivery.
So we put a campaign together to help people hopefully think of us a bit differently. And there were really two core messages in that campaign. One was [that Walmart has] a really broad assortment of over half billion items. And then the second was that Walmart’s fast.
And if Walmart was fast at that time, it’s getting faster.