Walmart's AI Roadmap: From "Online Shopping Platform" to "AI Chatbox"

——Based on the notes from the ICR Conference conversation between Goldman Sachs and Walmart management

Hello everyone, this is YouDou.

Today's article discusses ameeting summary that is highly recommended for long-term investors to read carefully—
from Goldman Sachs after the ICR Conference on January 13, 2026, featuring a summary of key points from the conversation with Walmart (WMT) management.

If you have regarded Walmart as a “defensive, low-volatility, inflation beneficiary” traditional retail stock in recent years, this summary may require you to recalibrate your long-term perception of Walmart.

1. Walmart Is Truly Integrating AI Into the “Transaction Chain”

At this ICR Conference, Walmart was not just making broad statements like “we also use AI”; instead, they explicitly outlined the path and scenarios.

Management highlighted two main lines of collaboration:

• With Google’s Gemini

• With OpenAI’s ChatGPT

  
  

The key is not just “accessing AI,” but—
Walmart’s products, prices, and fulfillment capabilities have already been directly embedded into these AI Agents’ “answer systems”.

In other words:

• Users no longer need to “know what they want to buy first”

• They can start from questions with “non-shopping intent”

• Ultimately, in the conversation, they cancomplete the order

  
  

This is a very important shift:

E-commerce is no longer just the endpoint of traffic, but has become the default executor in the AI decision-making path.

2. This Is Not Just Traffic Diversion, but a “New Starting Point for Shopping”

Management used a very crucial expression:

Customer journeys that do not begin with commercial intent, but end with commerce.

In plain language, this means:

• In the past:
  “I want to buy a TV → open the Walmart App / website”

• In the future:
  “What kind of TV is suitable for my living room?”
  ↓
  AI gives suggestions
  ↓
  Walmart products appear directly
  ↓
  One-click order

  
  

Within this structure, trust + price + fulfillment speed are the core competencies.
These three have precisely been Walmart’s strongest moat for the past 20 years.

3. The First to Benefit Are Not Standard Products, but “Categories That Require Inspiration”

Management made it clear that AI-driven shopping will first change not the high-frequency, must-have standard products, but:

• Apparel / Beauty

• Mother & Baby

• Auto Care

• Consumer Electronics

The common features of these categories are:

• Low frequency

• Require comparison

• Need suggestions

• High decision cost

Once AI can “understand who you are, what you have bought, and your current scenario,”
average order value, conversion rates, and cross-selling will all undergo structural changes.

4. AI Not Only Changes the Front End, but Also Reshapes Walmart’s Cost Structure

This point is often overlooked.

Walmart mentioned at the conference that AI has already started to deeply intervene in:

• Supply chain forecasting

• Store replenishment

• Employee-facing information systems

• Customer service and after-sales (AI Agent: Sparky)

One sentence is especially worth noting:

In the future, apps will “require less scrolling and more intent understanding”

Behind this, the essence is efficiency improvement + optimization of labor cost structure,
which is hugely significant for a giant retailer with an EBIT margin of only 4%-5%.

5. Under “Consumer Pressure,” Walmart Is Actually More Stable

Regarding U.S. consumers, management gave a very pragmatic assessment:

• Low-income groups: high emotional pressure

• But those who enter supermarkets are still spending money

• Food inflation has clearly slowed down

• Beef still faces inflation, but categories like eggs are seeing price drops

In an environment of “high interest rates + high uncertainty,”
Walmart’s value for money + omnichannel capabilities are actually allowing it to continuously gain market share.

6. Valuation and Conclusion: Why Does Goldman Sachs Still Give a Buy?

Goldman Sachs maintains a Buy rating, with a 12-month target price of $121. The core logic is not complicated:

• EPS is still growing at a mid-to-high single digit to double-digit rate

• Profit margins are improving slowly but steadily

• AI brings long-term structural improvement, not just a one-off story

Walmart is no longer just a “defensive consumer stock,”
but is evolving into an “AI-empowered, infrastructure-level retail platform”.

My Understanding

From an investment perspective, I would summarize this meeting note in one sentence:

Walmart is becoming the “most easily invoked retail execution layer” in the AI era.

As more and more consumer decisions take place in AI conversations in the future,
what will truly be valuable is not the model itself, but who can turn “recommendations” into “fulfillment”.

And Walmart is clearly in a very advantageous position.