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.
Retail Closes the Holiday Season Leaner and More Focused
December 24, 2025
Retail in 2025 was defined less by a single breakthrough than by a set of pressures that forced retailers to get practical. Consumers kept shopping. But they did it with ...Read moreRetailers Turn to AI and Robotics to Keep Holiday Fulfillment on Track
December 22, 2025
As peak holiday demand stretches supply chains to their limits, global retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Target are leaning heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to move goods faster, ...Read moreWhy AI Agent Prompts May Pose a New Antitrust Risk
December 19, 2025
As agentic AI shifts from “assistive” copilots to systems that can autonomously recommend and increasingly execute business decisions, a new antitrust risk is emerging at the level of language. In a Tech Policy Press Perspective, Nikhil Jain, ...Read moreAmazon and Walmart See Intent as 2026’s Holy Grail
December 18, 2025
Among retail’s most dominant themes in 2025 was that the next era of competition is about ecosystem control, not just operational excellence. As 2026 approaches, Walmart and Amazon are focused on ...Read morePepsiCo and Walmart Face Federal Lawsuit Alleging Long-Running Price-Fixing Scheme
December 17, 2025
PepsiCo and Walmart have been named in a new consumer lawsuit filed in federal court in New York, accusing the two companies of working together for years to inflate the ...Read moreUSPS to Allow All Shippers to Bid on Last-Mile Delivery Service
December 17, 2025
The United States Postal Service (USPS) plans to make its last-mile delivery service available to shippers of all sizes. After offering a limited number of very large customers delivery service direct from its 18,000 delivery destination units ...Read moreTeikametrics Debuts AI Tool to Assist Retailers
December 17, 2025
Marketplace optimization platform Teikametrics has debuted an artificial intelligence (AI) system dubbed Artificial Retail Intelligence (ARI). This new system is designed to increase merchant success on Walmart, Amazon and TikTok as ...Read moreSquare and Thrive Team to Help Retailers Manage Inventory
December 16, 2025
Square has expanded its partnership with inventory management reporting system Thrive. The expanded collaboration is designed to help sellers manage their catalogs, sales and stock between their in-store and eCommerce platforms, ...Read moreRetailers Urge Judge to Block Visa, Mastercard Fee Settlement
December 15, 2025
Major retailers and trade groups are pressing a federal judge in Brooklyn to reject a proposed antitrust settlement with Visa and Mastercard, arguing that the agreement would allow the two ...Read morePolyAI Raises $86 Million to Bolster Conversational AI Platform
December 15, 2025
Conversational artificial intelligence startup PolyAI raised $86 million in new funding. The company’s Series D round will allow it to further develop the technology behind its Agent Studio platform, PolyAI said ...Read more
Uber Launches Exchangeable Bond Deal Featuring Rare Structure
May 20, 2025
A $1.2 billion exchangeable bond deal announced last week by Uber Technologies reportedly features a rare structure that is appealing to investors and to Uber. The deal is tied to Uber’s ...Read moreAutonomous Transport Could Drive Trucking Into Digital Transformation’s Fast Lane
May 15, 2024
In America, we move most of our goods by road. This makes trucks and 18-wheelers a crucial, even definitive, part of any supply chain. It also highlights the compounding impact of ...Read moreUber Eats and Waymo Roll Out Autonomous Delivery in Phoenix
April 3, 2024
Uber 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, 2024
Mobility 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, 2022
Waymo 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, 2019
Silicon 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, 2019
Waymo‘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, 2018
Driverless 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, 2018
Kodiak 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, 2018
Combining 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 more
Retailers Turn to AI and Robotics to Keep Holiday Fulfillment on Track
December 22, 2025As peak holiday demand stretches supply chains to their limits, global retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Target are leaning heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to move goods faster, ...Read moreSoftBank and Nvidia Consider Joining Funding Round for Robotics Firm Skild AI
December 8, 2025
SoftBank Group and Nvidia are reportedly in talks to participate in a more than $1 billion funding round for Skild AI, a maker of foundation models for robots. The round, which ...Read moreBaobab Ventures Debuts $15 Million Fund for AI Projects
November 26, 2025
Tech investor Carles Reina has launched a fund focusing on artificial intelligence, robotics and defense. The $15 million Baobab Ventures fund will focus on pre-seed and seed technical teams and has already closed seven deals, ...Read moreThe Weekender: Robots, Robots Everywhere (Even at the Litter Box)
November 22, 2025
Blame the elves. They saw generative artificial intelligence (AI) coming for their jobs and outsourced Christmas to robots. This holiday season, the digital economy’s strangest edges have gone gloriously mainstream: ...Read morePhysical AI Moves from Automation to a New Workforce Layer
November 18, 2025
Physical AI is emerging as the next stage of robotics as advances in sensing, perception and large AI models give machines capabilities that traditional automation never supported. Earlier robots followed ...Read moreAI Needs Spatial Intelligence for Next Leap, Experts Say
November 12, 2025
Fei-Fei Li, known as the “godmother of AI,” argues that the current era of artificial intelligence (AI), dominated by large language models and image classifiers, has reached its limits. In ...Read moreUber Acquires Segments.ai to Grow Data Labeling Business
October 2, 2025
Uber has acquired Segments.ai, a multi-sensor labeling platform for robotics and autonomous driving, the two companies said Thursday (Oct. 2) in separate posts on LinkedIn. In its post, Uber AI Solutions, ...Read moreFieldAI Raises $405 Million for Robotic AI and General-Purpose Robots
August 20, 2025
FieldAI said Wednesday (Aug. 20) that it raised $405 million in two consecutive rounds to accelerate the global adoption of its general-purpose robots. The latest round was oversubscribed as the company ...Read moreSkild Debuts AI It Says Can Run on Any Robot
July 29, 2025
Robotics startup Skild AI has introduced an artificial intelligence (AI) model it says can run on almost any robot. The AI model, known as “Skild Brain,” lets robots — from humanoids ...Read moreFrom Kitchen to Front of House, Restaurants Deploy AI-Powered Robots
July 9, 2025
Restaurants are integrating artificial intelligence (AI)-powered robots end-to-end in their operations, doing tasks such as serving food to diners, cooking meals, delivering food and even mixing cocktails. Robots are taking more ...Read more
Walking in a Payments Wonderland
December 25, 2025
(2025) Snow falls soft on legacy rails, Paper checks stuck in the mail. We gather ‘round the dashboard glow, Watching how payments flow. AI agents take the stand, Walking in a payments wonderland. Gone are bots that ...Read moreBig Tech Moves Toward Specialized AI and Immersive Retail
December 23, 2025
From new multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) models to immersive storytelling spaces and agent-driven enterprise tools, Big Tech’s latest moves show AI becoming the connective tissue across products, experiences and business ...Read moreTanger CEO Stephen Yalof Says Holiday Shoppers Seek Value
December 23, 2025
Holiday shoppers are willing to spend but are looking for value, Tanger CEO Stephen Yalof told CNBC Tuesday (Dec. 23). Retailers at Tanger’s outlet centers are catering to this demand with ...Read moreAverage Value of Card-Not-Present Debit Transactions Dips, Fed Says
December 23, 2025
Consumers continue to spend more on their debit cards, although the rate of growth has slowed. Total debit card transaction volume and value both grew at an average rate of 4.6% ...Read moreHoliday Shoppers Increase Their Use of Cross-Channel Shopping and AI Tools
December 23, 2025
American consumers spent more this holiday season while using cross-channel shopping and artificial intelligence (AI) tools for bargain hunting and convenience, according to separate analyses by Mastercard and Visa. Mastercard SpendingPulse found that U.S. retail ...Read moreSaks Considers Chapter 11 Bankruptcy as $100M Debt Payment Comes Due
December 23, 2025
Saks Global is considering bankruptcy while facing a $100 million-plus debt payment, Bloomberg reported Monday (Dec. 22). The luxury retail group is also mulling other ways to boost liquidity, such as ...Read moreInstacart Halts Algorithmic Price Testing Following Consumer Reports Study
December 22, 2025
Instacart is suspending its price testing practice on its grocery delivery platform, according to a Monday (Dec. 22) company blog post. The announcement followed the Dec. 9 publication of an investigation ...Read morePandora Embraces AI Agents, Gets New CEO
December 22, 2025
Jewelry retailer Pandora is seeing the benefits of agentic artificial intelligence amid a leadership change. The company’s AI agent, Clara, now resolves roughly 60% of customer service inquiries, Glossy reported Monday ...Read moreVisa Maps a Path to Agentic Commerce That Feels Familiar — and Safe
December 22, 2025
Watch more: Monday Conversation: Visa’s Rubail Birwadker A digital assistant can already do a lot of the work that once belonged to people. It can search for products, compare suppliers, book travel ...Read moreAI-Driven Convenience Is Replacing Traditional Shopping for Consumers
December 19, 2025
Consumers are increasingly comfortable completing purchases directly inside artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, signaling a potential shift in how digital commerce journeys are structured. A new PYMNTS Intelligence survey of 1,425 U.S. ...Read more
Walmart Teams With Fiserv on Instant Bank Payments
September 19, 2024
Walmart is reportedly enhancing its pay-by-bank offering via a partnership with Fiserv. The retailer began offering pay-by-bank with Walmart Pay earlier this year, Bloomberg reported Thursday (Sept. 19). But those transactions, ...Read moreNew Data: 95 Pct. Of Consumers Don’t Use Mobile Wallets For In-Store Purchases
April 6, 2020
Among 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, 2019
Apple 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, 2018
The 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, 2018
The 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, 2018
About 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, 2018
Another 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, 2017
Payments 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, 2017
For 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, 2017
Accomplished 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 more