沃尔玛（Walmart）能否在蓬勃发展的AI智能体竞赛中脱颖而出？
上周三在纽约活动现场目睹沃尔玛技术高管们演示一系列新型智能体后，对于这个问题，肯定回答或许不再那么难以置信。该零售巨头披露了其AI智能体将如何革新三大领域：顾客在数字平台的购物方式、企业总部与门店员工的工作模式、供应商和卖家追踪商品表现的模式。在部分场景中，这项自主执行技术已然落地。
公司首席技术官苏雷什·库马尔在现场对媒体表示：“沃尔玛正全力投入智能体开发。智能体能使沃尔玛各环节的运作更加高效。”
尽管以实体零售起家，沃尔玛近年来已跻身线上商业前沿。而在积极采用AI智能体领域，该公司甚至超越了众多数字原生企业。
对科技行业而言，智能体是当前AI热潮下一次进化的方向。人工智能不仅充当助手，更能在极少或无需人类干预的情况下自主完成多步骤复杂任务。沃尔玛高管表示，对于总部位于阿肯色州的这家零售商而言，这正是其过去数年技术转型的必然方向。库马尔指出，考虑到公司因庞大的客户群积累的数据深度及作为全球最大私营雇主的员工经验储备，沃尔玛在这个领域具备关键优势，领先于许多竞争对手。
库马尔与其他技术高管现场展示了四款"超级智能体"，它们本质上是向更专业的智能体分配任务的管理者。面向消费者的"Sparky"作为生成式AI数字助手，当前已上线沃尔玛应用，可解答产品咨询并提供建议。未来，这款数字助手将升级为执行型智能体。它可以根据顾客的购物习惯自动生成每周必需品订单，经用户一键确认即可下单。该智能体最终还可以依据主题、参与人数及预算等参数，为即将举办的派对或活动定制多品类采购方案。
其他高管演示的内部智能体应用场景，据称将显著提升门店员工、总部职员、软件工程师和品牌商以及通过沃尔玛实体店和数字平台出售商品的其他公司处理日常重复性任务的效率。
公司高管表示部分智能体已投入使用，其余将陆续上线。但他们特别强调了关键的一点。
某高管敏锐地领会了记者提问的弦外之音并表示：“这绝非概念泡沫。”
有许多核心问题仍悬而未决。若所谓“智能体未来”得以全面实现，对这家全球最大私营雇主的员工数量将产生何种具体影响？
沃尔玛高管戴夫·格利克对《财富》表示：“我们预期岗位职能将发生变化，但尚不明确变化的具体形态。”
大规模应用AI带来的营收增长与员工生产力提升，是否能够抵消其巨额成本？尤其对这家以持续盈利著称于华尔街的企业而言？
从行业层面来看，若未来消费者委托OpenAI或Perplexity等公司的购物智能体自主决策，沃尔玛是否愿参与此生态？沃尔玛美国首席技术官哈里·瓦苏德夫对《财富》杂志表示，公司正在打造相关技术能力，但最终决策权不属技术部门。
他表示：“我不愿意限定商业模式，而希望保持最大开放度。是否与特定AI运营商合作，将取决于经济模型、商业模式及合作关系。”（*）
译者：刘进龙
审校：汪皓
沃尔玛（Walmart）能否在蓬勃发展的AI智能体竞赛中脱颖而出？
上周三在纽约活动现场目睹沃尔玛技术高管们演示一系列新型智能体后，对于这个问题，肯定回答或许不再那么难以置信。该零售巨头披露了其AI智能体将如何革新三大领域：顾客在数字平台的购物方式、企业总部与门店员工的工作模式、供应商和卖家追踪商品表现的模式。在部分场景中，这项自主执行技术已然落地。
公司首席技术官苏雷什·库马尔在现场对媒体表示：“沃尔玛正全力投入智能体开发。智能体能使沃尔玛各环节的运作更加高效。”
尽管以实体零售起家，沃尔玛近年来已跻身线上商业前沿。而在积极采用AI智能体领域，该公司甚至超越了众多数字原生企业。
对科技行业而言，智能体是当前AI热潮下一次进化的方向。人工智能不仅充当助手，更能在极少或无需人类干预的情况下自主完成多步骤复杂任务。沃尔玛高管表示，对于总部位于阿肯色州的这家零售商而言，这正是其过去数年技术转型的必然方向。库马尔指出，考虑到公司因庞大的客户群积累的数据深度及作为全球最大私营雇主的员工经验储备，沃尔玛在这个领域具备关键优势，领先于许多竞争对手。
库马尔与其他技术高管现场展示了四款"超级智能体"，它们本质上是向更专业的智能体分配任务的管理者。面向消费者的"Sparky"作为生成式AI数字助手，当前已上线沃尔玛应用，可解答产品咨询并提供建议。未来，这款数字助手将升级为执行型智能体。它可以根据顾客的购物习惯自动生成每周必需品订单，经用户一键确认即可下单。该智能体最终还可以依据主题、参与人数及预算等参数，为即将举办的派对或活动定制多品类采购方案。
其他高管演示的内部智能体应用场景，据称将显著提升门店员工、总部职员、软件工程师和品牌商以及通过沃尔玛实体店和数字平台出售商品的其他公司处理日常重复性任务的效率。
公司高管表示部分智能体已投入使用，其余将陆续上线。但他们特别强调了关键的一点。
某高管敏锐地领会了记者提问的弦外之音并表示：“这绝非概念泡沫。”
有许多核心问题仍悬而未决。若所谓“智能体未来”得以全面实现，对这家全球最大私营雇主的员工数量将产生何种具体影响？
沃尔玛高管戴夫·格利克对《财富》表示：“我们预期岗位职能将发生变化，但尚不明确变化的具体形态。”
大规模应用AI带来的营收增长与员工生产力提升，是否能够抵消其巨额成本？尤其对这家以持续盈利著称于华尔街的企业而言？
从行业层面来看，若未来消费者委托OpenAI或Perplexity等公司的购物智能体自主决策，沃尔玛是否愿参与此生态？沃尔玛美国首席技术官哈里·瓦苏德夫对《财富》杂志表示，公司正在打造相关技术能力，但最终决策权不属技术部门。
他表示：“我不愿意限定商业模式，而希望保持最大开放度。是否与特定AI运营商合作，将取决于经济模型、商业模式及合作关系。”（*）
译者：刘进龙
审校：汪皓
Could Walmart become a leader in the burgeoning agentic AI race?
After watching the retail company’s technology leaders discuss a host of new agents Wednesday at a New York City event, a yes might not be as farfetched as it might sound to some. The retail giant unveiled its vision for how AI agents are going to overhaul how customers shop on its digital platforms; how corporate and store employees do their jobs; and how vendors and sellers track their merchandise performance. In some cases, this autonomous technology is doing so already.
“Walmart is all in on agents,” the company’s chief technology officer, Suresh Kumar, told reporters at the event. “Agents can make life simpler for every aspect of what we do at Walmart,” he added.
Despite its roots as a brick-and-mortar retailer, Walmart has more recently been at the forefront of online commerce. In embracing AI agents, however, the company is positioning itself ahead of even many digital companies.
Agents, to many in the tech industry, are the next evolution in the current AI boom, where artificial intelligence not only acts as an assistant, but can autonomously complete complex multistep actions with limited, or even no, human involvement. And for Walmart, the company’s leaders say it’s a natural next step in a technological transformation that has been underway inside the Arkansas-based retailer for the past few years. Kumar said he believes that Walmart holds a key advantage over many competitors in this space, considering the depth and breadth of data the company holds both because of its massive customer base, and when it comes to employee experiences as the world’s largest nongovernment employer.
He and other Walmart tech leaders showed off examples of four “super agents,” which essentially act as managers that rout tasks to each more specialized agent. For consumers, there’s Sparky, currently a generative AI digital assistant that can answer product questions and make suggestions, and which has been live in Walmart’s app for some time. In the future, the assistant will start to take actions. Namely, create an order of weekly essential products based on a customer’s shopping behavior, and place the order with essentially a thumbs-up from the customer. The agent will also eventually possess the capability to curate a multi-item order geared to an upcoming party or event—based on specifics such as theme, attendee size, and a shopper’s budget.
Other leaders showcased internal agent use cases that the company says will more efficiently accomplish mundane and repetitive tasks for store workers, corporate staff, Walmart software engineers, and brands and other companies that sell through Walmart’s physical and digital storefronts.
While some of these agentic use cases are live today, others are coming soon, company execs said. But they were intent on making one point clear.
“It’s not vaporware,” one executive said, accurately reading between the lines of one of this reporter’s questions.
Critically, many questions remain unanswered. What exact impact will this so-called agentic future—if brought to full fruition—have on employee headcount at the world’s largest nongovernment employer?
“We expect jobs to evolve, and we don’t know what that looks like yet,” Walmart exec Dave Glick told Fortune.
Will the revenue and employee productivity gains outweigh the intense costs of using AI at scale, especially for a company known on Wall Street for consistently generating profits?
And at a broader industry level, is Walmart willing to participate in a possible future where consumers trust shopping agents from companies like OpenAI or Perplexity to autonomously make purchase decisions for them? Walmart U.S. CTO Hari Vasudev told Fortune that the company is building the technological capabilities to do so, but that the ultimate decision will lie elsewhere in the company.
“I don’t want to mandate the business model; I want to be able to build it as open as I can,” he said. “Whether the business decides to do it with a particular AI operator or not will depend on the economics and the business model and the relationships.”