Suresh Kumar says a Walmart store is located within ten miles of 90% of the U.S. population.
“There is a Walmart within, you know, ten miles of 90% of the U. S. population.”
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Suresh Kumar
1 episodes · 15 quoted claims
Suresh Kumar did his undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras before moving directly to the U.S. for a PhD.
“I went to Indian Institute of Technology Madras. And then after I graduated, I came directly to the U. S. to do my PhD.”
Walmart's partnership with OpenAI will let users find Walmart products inside ChatGPT, with in-chat checkout to follow.
“you can, uh uh, find all the Walmart products right, you know, right there.”
Walmart is building its own AI shopping agent called Sparky that shoppers can talk to instead of typing keywords.
“We call it Sparky, and there, I, instead of having to deal with a search bar and where you type in keywords, you'll you can have a natural conversation with Sparky.”
Walmart Express delivery can bring needed products to customers in less than an hour, depending on location.
“We can uh have products that you really need right now delivered to you in less than an hour, uh, depending upon where you live”
Walmart does not build its own foundation AI models and instead uses models from providers such as OpenAI and Google.
“We don't build our own foundational models. We make use of the best foundational models that are out there”
During severe East Coast weather last year, Walmart rerouted deliveries from one warehouse to another by reconfiguring its supply chain network.
“last year, when we had severe weather in parts of the East Coast, we were able to, on the fly, reconfigure our supply chain network.”
Walmart has built a high-fidelity digital model of its entire supply chain network to test scenarios such as a warehouse closure.
“we have created a high fidelity model of the entire uh supply chain network.”
Walmart is building digital twins of stores to improve merchandising facings and the paths shoppers take to pick online orders.
“Digital twins also allow us to optimize the pick path uh for our uh shoppers”
Walmart built custom automation in cold-chain grocery distribution centers to reduce the need for associates to work in sub-zero freezers.
“distribution centers which handle groceries, working inside the cold chain, going into the freezer every single day for our associates used to be a very, very hard thing to do”
Walmart uses human reviewers who check a statistical sample of AI outputs, and all outputs when a new system launches.
“we have human in the loop where we take, you know, um, a statistical uh sample during operational time and during build time.”
Suresh Kumar argues that spreadsheets led to more financial analysis rather than fewer analysts, and expects AI to expand work similarly.
“It's not that we had fewer analysts, financial analysts being done after spreadsheets started showing up in. In fact, we now have far more analysis being done.”
Suresh Kumar took Walmart's leaders to visit companies and universities in the Bay Area as part of preparing for AI transformation.
“I took all of our leaders to go visit a number of companies in uh the Bay Area.”
Kumar says Walmart describes itself as 'people led and tech powered.'
“we describe ourselves as being people led and tech powered, and it's very deliberate, right?”
Kumar states Walmart's purpose is to help people save money so they can live better.
“So we help people save money so they can live better.”