Walmart AI Success: How Walmart is Seeing Greater ROI with Gen AI Search

Within the dynamic retail industry, Walmart has continuously distinguished itself as a leader in utilizing state-of-the-art technology to achieve unmatched productivity and efficiency. Walmart, one of the biggest retailers in the world, has made calculated investments to integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into every aspect of the business since realizing its disruptive potential for years.

Lately, Walmart Inc. announced its 2025 Q1 results, which showed steady growth in revenue and operating income. Globally, e-commerce grew by 22 percent across all segments. Walmart executives credited e-commerce growth to several factors, including delivery improvements, but one stood out: the generative AI search engine.

In this article, we will explore how Walmart is accelerating its core business with gen AI search and the key takeaways for CTOs and other business leaders.

 AI has changed what Walmart can do with search

Walmart built an all-new generative AI-powered search function across iOS, Android, and its website. The new capability is specifically designed to understand the context of a customer’s query and generate personalized responses.

So instead of researching what to buy on a search engine like Google and heading to Walmart’s website for those items, the retailer’s generative AI can find specific answers, narrowing the choices to a few, further helping save people’s time.

For example, if you search “help me buy a Valentine’s Day gift,” the search returns relevant and curated results like chocolates, a watch, jewelry, flowers, etc.

The search tool can also account for contextual information such as location and search history to further refine results, with the goal of providing a curated list of products that meet the customer’s needs.

Overall, generative AI simplifies the retail search process, transforming the shopping activity from scroll-driven to goal-driven. This makes the online shopping experience more streamlined by potentially reducing the number of searches, clicks, and page navigation needed to find items. This efficiency has resulted in a revenue boost due to an improved shopping experience.

“Creating great customer and member experiences is our top priority, and gen AI-powered search makes online shopping even more intuitive and convenient,” a Walmart spokesperson told CNBC. “

Measuring ROI by ensuring accuracy and utility

According to Anshu Bhardwaj, SVP and COO of Walmart Global Technology and Walmart Commerce Technologies, Walmart continuously evaluates gen AI applications for ROI. The teams identify metrics they intend to reach at certain “checkpoints,” and course-correct if projects aren’t going as planned.

Bhardwaj said that Walmart also monitors its Gen AI models to ensure they deliver desired, accurate results. The staff regularly tests the models to monitor “drift”—the phenomenon whereby generative AIs become less accurate over time—by comparing answers the AIs currently give with ones they produced when they were first launched.

The company even conducts regular A/B tests of its outputs and actively seeks human feedback through upvotes, opinion polls, customer complaints, and employee reports.

Future AI capabilities in the pipeline

The retail giant has other Gen AI applications in the pipeline.

According to Bhardwaj, the company is exploring ‘ultra-personalized shopping assistants’ that could, for instance, determine which family member was using a Walmart+ account while shopping online. It’s also working on a new assistant that would summarize answers to sellers’ questions, saving them from having to sift through articles for the information they’re looking for.

Bhardwaj emphasized the fact that Walmart will certainly continue to invest in AI, which will help provide a solution to a specific problem. The key is to stay ahead of the curve at all times.

Key lessons to learn for CTOs

Commitment to innovation

 Walmart’s foray into generative AI search capabilities underscores its commitment to innovation and leadership in the retail sector. Despite the potential risks associated with introducing new tech features, Walmart’s strong position allows it to experiment with minimal consequences for failure.

Subtle but clever initiatives

Unlike many AI initiatives that try to change their user experience by introducing new complicated features, which disrupt the customer’s old workflows, Walmart very subtly provides a chatbot-style experience in its search functionality. Customers can continue using the Walmart platform as they always have and reap these additional context-aware search benefits.

Threat to competitors

Walmart’s innovation in AI-driven search may impact traditional search engine usage, prompting users to stay within retail platforms for comprehensive searches, potentially challenging Google’s advertising-driven business model.

In short, Walmart’s innovation could diminish the competitor’s role in the search journey, especially in the e-commerce sector.

Applying AI where it truly matters

Unlike many companies that use AI for AI’s sake, Walmart is a notable example of a company that applies AI where it truly matters.

The company progressively introduces more advanced AI features into existing AI-powered solutions and subtly incorporates AI technologies without disrupting the customer experience, as was seen in the generative AI-powered search example.

Setting the stage for new AI advancements

Walmart was able to roll out new AI tools relatively quickly because of its prior investments in technology. Hence, when generative AI emerged, Walmart was ready for it. It was among the earliest companies to build generative AI into their infrastructure.

Hence, leaders should recalibrate their approach toward technology usage at the outset and set the stage for futuristic new trends/developments. Moreover, to stay ahead and maximize return on investment (ROI), leaders should understand how people can adopt new technology advancements to their advantage.

Accelerate the core business – deliver greater ROI with AI

The success to date of top-performing AI adopters serves as an indicator of the potential growth opportunities available from AI and gen AI for everyone else. A recent analysis by Accenture reveals that, since 2022, companies with the greatest AI maturity have been growing 3 percentage points more (or 4.7x) year over year than companies with the least maturity.

Accenture even estimates that more than US$10.3 trillion in additional economic value can be unlocked by 2038 just by companies that are adopting gen AI alone and at scale.

Despite these positive signals, most companies have not taken the AI approach yet. They are understandably in search of where the AI growth opportunity is for them and when they might get to experience the greater share of the AI wealth.  However, experts suggest leaders to be forward -thinking and embrace the paradigm shift that AI represents. Rather than waiting for and monitoring the risk of disruption, they should take proactive steps to find new growth and outmaneuver their competition.

In the age of AI, business growth is no longer solely a function of how well companies can continually strengthen their core business capabilities or operating models. While it is true that AI can accelerate those critical activities, it does so much more. It adds more certainty to the bets that leaders place and lowers barriers to market entry. It also allows businesses to extend traditional markets and unlock thousands of new ROI-generating opportunities. In short, it is radically changing where ROI value is found. And how it is pursued.  

In brief:

Walmart has been a leader in developing AI retail tools for the past few years and is now starting to build and pilot a variety of in-house-developed AI solutions. The leader is gearing up for a shift in consumer behavior as artificial intelligence begins to take a more active role in how people shop.