pymnts Profile:
Walmart (NYSE: WMT)
Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores. Headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, the company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 and incorporated on October 31, 1969.
Report: Kroger and Disney Exploring Streaming Service Offering
May 1, 2024Kroger and Walt Disney Co. are reportedly exploring a partnership that would offer the Disney+ streaming service to subscribers of Kroger’s grocery delivery program. If a deal is struck, Kroger Boost subscribers would get access to Disney+ at ...Read moreWhen Consumers Buy Electronics, Online Marketplaces Beat Physical Stores
April 30, 2024Typically, consumers’ preferred purchasing channel remains the physical store, but when it comes to buying electronics, shoppers turn to third-party marketplaces for affordability and convenience. By the Numbers The new PYMNTS Intelligence report “The ...Read moreSam’s Club Says AI Exit Scans Are in 120 Stores
April 30, 2024Sam’s Club said its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered exit scanners are now in 120 stores. The technology, first announced in January, eliminates the practice of having customers wait in line as they ...Read moreYoung Consumers Make Next-Level Purchases From In-Video-Game Stores
April 30, 2024Many gamers are open to making purchases while they explore their favorite virtual worlds, and retailers are seizing on the opportunity. Most recently, Walmart launched a store within the world of Roblox Monday (April 29) where consumers ...Read moreWalmart-Vizio Merger Gets FTC Antitrust Scrutiny
April 30, 2024Federal regulators are examining Walmart’s plan to buy smart television maker Vizio. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is conducting an antitrust review of the proposed $2.3 billion merger, Vizio said in a regulatory filing Tuesday (April 30). According to ...Read moreWalmart’s Vizio Acquisition Faces FTC Antitrust Review
April 30, 2024Walmart’s proposed acquisition of smart-TV manufacturer Vizio Holding Corp. is now set to undergo rigorous scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as confirmed by Vizio on Tuesday. According to disclosures ...Read moreWalmart to Close Health Centers, Telehealth Offering Amid ‘Lack of Profitability’
April 30, 2024Walmart is shutting down its health centers and telehealth offering, saying there is not a sustainable business model for these operations to continue. The company will close all 51 Walmart Health centers across five ...Read moreWalmart Debuts ‘bettergoods’ in Massive Private Label Expansion
April 30, 2024Walmart is expanding its private-label offerings with the debut of “chef-inspired” food brand bettergoods. Announced Tuesday (April 30), bettergoods represents Walmart’s largest private-brand food rollout in two decades, the company said in a news ...Read moreWhy Measuring the ROI of Transformative Technology Like GenAI Is So Hard
April 30, 2024Google’s market cap topped $2 trillion last week after quarterly earnings convinced investors that demand for its GenAI platform was not only strong but being monetized in the here and ...Read moreArtsy Shoppers Are Ditching Craft Stores for More Convenient eCommerce Options
April 29, 2024Consumers are cutting back on nice-to-haves like craft supplies, and even when they do buy these items, they are increasingly choosing retail giants such as Amazon, leaving arts stores in the ...Read more
Uber Eats and Waymo Roll Out Autonomous Delivery in Phoenix
April 3, 2024Uber is expanding its Phoenix-based partnership with autonomous vehicle company Waymo. The company announced Wednesday (April 3) that it is now offering Uber Eats deliveries in the Arizona capital via Waymo vehicles. “Starting today in Phoenix, ...Read moreContinental and Aurora Finalize Autonomous Trucking System Design
January 5, 2024Mobility technology firm Continental and self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation have finalized the design of a scalable autonomous trucking system and plan to start production in 2027. Finalizing the design and ...Read moreWaymo Via, Uber Freight Sign Partnership on Self-Driving Trucks
June 7, 2022Waymo Via, Alphabet’s self-driving trucking unit, has signed a deal with Uber’s Freight business to help future customers deploy autonomous trucks more easily, Reuters wrote Tuesday (June 7). The partnership could ...Read moreSelf-Driving Truck Hauls 40K Pounds Of Butter Across US
December 30, 2019Silicon Valley startup Plus.ai is thought to be the first company to deploy a self-driving commercial truck to haul 40,000 pounds of butter roughly 42 hours cross-country from Tulare, California ...Read moreWaymo Returns Its Self-Driving Trucks To Arizona
May 30, 2019Waymo‘s self-driving trucks are making a return to Arizona. The company’s self-driving, Class 8, big-rig trucks haven’t been in the state for more than a year, though they were first tested ...Read moreDriverless Trucks Hog the Highway to an Autonomous Vehicle Future
October 2, 2018Driverless cars are indeed coming to roads soon enough — the U.K.’s transport secretary, in fact, recently predicted that those vehicles would appear there within four years. Even so, it might ...Read moreEx-Uber, Otto Exec’s Autonomous Truck Startup Snags $40M
August 8, 2018Kodiak Robotics, a self-driving vehicle startup, announced that it raised $40 million in Series A funding, led by global investment firm Battery Ventures. CRV, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Tusk Ventures ...Read moreDaimler Unveils eMobility Unit For Trucks And Buses
June 6, 2018Combining its efforts from five divisions, Daimler Trucks is rolling out an eMobility unit. The idea behind the unit is to speed up the creation of battery-powered engines for use ...Read morePatent Applications Offer A Peek Into Walmart’s Possible Techy Future
June 1, 2018And the award for “techiest” retailer goes to … Walmart? The big-box retailer recently published a number of patent filings that would certainly make it a contender for “Most Futuristic Shopping ...Read moreUber Goes Autonomous For Uber Freight
March 7, 2018Uber Freight is finally launching its autonomous truck deliveries, with the first hauls driven in tandem with both human drivers and self-driving trucks being completed in Arizona. According to TechCrunch, Uber ...Read more
This Week in AI: Beyond LLMs, AI Forklifts, Weather Forecasting
April 26, 2024This week in artificial intelligence (AI) news, as large language models (LLMs) near technical limits, the focus shifts to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which combines information retrieval with natural language generation, ...Read moreRobo-Forklifts Rev Up Walmart’s Warehouses
April 25, 2024In Walmart’s sprawling distribution centers, a quiet change is underway. The retail behemoth is preparing to deploy a fleet of 19 autonomous electric forklifts across four of its facilities, marking a significant step forward in integrating ...Read moreTesla Calls Itself an AI, Robotics Company as Profits Plunge 55%
April 23, 2024There was nothing electric about electric vehicle (EV) maker Tesla’s latest financial results. The company reported its first quarter 2024 earnings results Tuesday (April 23), disclosing a 55% drop in profits when ...Read moreRobots Redefine Surgical Landscape for Enhanced Patient Outcomes
April 23, 2024The integration of robotics is reshaping surgical procedures, promising enhanced precision, efficiency, and improved patient outcomes. Recent earnings reports from industry giants like Intuitive Surgical and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) shed light on the ...Read moreMobile Robots and AI Help Modernize, Streamline Warehouse Workflows
April 9, 2024The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) holds the promise to fully digitize all manner of verticals, all manner of workflows … … and in the age of eCommerce, advanced technology in ...Read moreMIT Engineers Aim to Advance Household Robots With AI Integration
April 8, 2024Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, household robots are getting smarter and could soon evolve far beyond their current roles as mostly self-guided vacuum cleaners. MIT engineers are working on a method that ...Read moreReport: Apple Considering Robots as New Opportunity for Growth
April 3, 2024Apple is reportedly considering entering the personal robotics market. The company is exploring projects in this field as it looks for new opportunities for growth after ending its electric vehicle project, Bloomberg reported Wednesday ...Read moreThis Week in AI: Human-Like Reasoning, Robots and Open Source
March 22, 2024This week in artificial intelligence (AI) news, a new technique, “Quiet-STaR,” teaches AI to think and chat more like humans by considering various ideas before answering, improving how we interact ...Read moreNvidia Unveils AI-Powered Humanoid Robot Project
March 21, 2024Nvidia is entering the humanoid robotics field with its new foundation model, Project GR00T. The company announced the artificial intelligence (AI) system at its developer conference this week, saying that it is versatile enough ...Read moreNvidia Launches Latest AI Chips and Software at Developer Conference
March 19, 2024Nvidia is rolling out a new series of artificial intelligence (AI) products at its annual developer conference in San Jose, California, as it strives to strengthen its reputation as the ...Read more
DoorDash Reports Record-High Orders as Consumers Seek Digital Solutions, Convenience
May 1, 2024DoorDash set new company records across several metrics in the first quarter as it continued to expand its services into new segments of the local retail economy. The on-demand delivery aggregator set ...Read moreCarvana’s Inventory ‘Constrained’ as Online Used Car Retailer Posts Record Q1
May 1, 2024Online used car retailer Carvana reported “milestone” first quarter (Q1) results on Wednesday (May 1), fueling a 30% surge in its stock price. This strong performance comes on the heels of ...Read moreEBay Targets Gains in Back Half of 2024 Amid ‘Tough’ Discretionary Spending Environment
May 1, 2024EBay’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) eked out slight gains in the most recent quarter, but the tally of 131 million active buyers in the quarter was unchanged. And growth may be ...Read moreEpos Now Considers Sale of Minority Stake
May 1, 2024British payments group Epos Now is running a private placement process to sell a minority stake in the business and bring on a strategic partner “for the next stage of ...Read moreConsumers Aren’t Buying Many Handmade Trinkets Amid Economic Concern
May 1, 2024As consumers continue to feel the economic strain, they are cutting back on buying boutique, handmade items from independent creators, per Etsy’s latest earnings call. The marketplace shared in its first ...Read moreEstée Lauder Targets New Customers With Amazon Storefront, ‘Creator Council’
May 1, 2024Estée Lauder Companies’ debut of its first brand on the U.S. Amazon Premium Beauty store has “greatly exceeded” the company’s retail sales expectations so far. This new offering, which started with the Clinique brand in late March ...Read more68% of Main Street SMBs Leveraging Social Media See Increasing Revenues
May 1, 2024Since April 2021, most Main Street small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) in the U.S. have been experiencing significant growth. In fact — according to PYMNTS Intelligence’s latest SMB Growth Monitor Report, ...Read moreConsumers Demand Anti-Fraud Tools From eCommerce Merchants
May 1, 2024As scammers and fraudsters become more sophisticated, shoppers are demanding more effective prevention tools from their eCommerce merchants. By the Numbers The PYMNTS Intelligence study “Fraud Management, False Declines and Improved Profitability,” ...Read moreCVS Q1 Earnings Take A Hit From Insurance Venture
May 1, 2024The volatile consumer healthcare sector showed up big in CVS’ Q1 earnings Wednesday (May 1), with solid revenue from its store operations but a warning about revenue projections due to its ...Read morePfizer Reportedly Plans D2C COVID and Migraine Drug Platform
May 1, 2024Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is reportedly creating an online platform selling anti-COVID and migraine medications. The platform, the subject of a Wednesday (May 1) Financial Times (FT) report, comes as drug makers are pushing to ...Read more
New Data: 95 Pct. Of Consumers Don’t Use Mobile Wallets For In-Store Purchases
April 6, 2020Among its many profound impacts, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered how consumers shop. Even before large-scale stay-at-home policies went into effect, most consumers sought to limit direct contact with ...Read moreREPORT: What Apple Pay At Five Says About The Future Of Mobile POS Payments
October 21, 2019Apple Pay went live five years ago yesterday, on Oct. 20, 2014. When Tim Cook took the stage a month beforehand to announce this mobile payments innovation, he shared Apple’s vision ...Read moreCuring Medicine’s Epidemic Of Noncompliance
March 22, 2018The New York Times wrote in April 2017 that the U.S. was in the throes of an epidemic for which there was not only a cure, but one that would ...Read moreMobile Wallets: Where’s The S-Curve?
February 26, 2018The classic product lifecycle that all of us had drilled into our heads in business school tells us that at the three-year mark for any new product, it’s top of ...Read moreWhat Payments Innovators Can Learn From Monkeys
January 15, 2018About 30 days from now, most of you reading this who made a New Year’s resolution will have broken it. Don’t feel too bad – you won’t be alone. By the middle ...Read moreMotivating Mobile In 2018
January 4, 2018Another year, another chance for mobile wallet players to convince consumers to give up their plastic cards and utilize the phone as a payments form factor. It hasn’t been easy. Despite ...Read moreMobile Payments 2.0: Building Better Retail Experiences
December 28, 2017Payments has by and large been a growth business for the last half decade or so, and that fact has been mappable in scores of innovations around the world. But, as ...Read moreTarget: Another Day, A New “Pay” Joins The Party
December 7, 2017For a minute, it seemed as though the proliferation of “Pays” was slowing down. Until recently, there was a tidal wave of Pays out to conquer digital with the power of mobile payments. Apple Pay, ...Read moreWhat Walmart’s Resurgence Means For Retail And The “Pays”
November 20, 2017Accomplished public intellectual and post-Keynesian economist John Kenneth Galbraith was well-known for four things. He didn’t think much of math and science — rather unusual given his choice of a profession that ...Read moreWhy Walmart Pay Is Leaving Apple Pay In The Dust
November 7, 2017Though Walmart’s mobile wallet, Walmart Pay, has not quite gotten the same level of coverage as its rivals in the field, particularly Apple Pay, it seems possible the QR code-based ...Read more